A part of the Karakoram Highway was swept away by a flood in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Upper Kohistan district on Monday evening, Deputy Commissioner (DC) Irfanullah Mehsood said.

DC Mehsood told Dawn.com that heavy rainfall had caused flooding in the Lachi nullah in Upper Kohistan’s Harban tehsil.

A mosque, a police station, a hotel and multiple houses were damaged and a stretch of the Karakoram Highway was swept away by the flood due to which “hundreds of passengers”, including families and tourists, were left stranded on the road, he said.

The DC said the highway’s restoration would “take days” as no trace of the thoroughfare was left near Lachi nullah.

Asadullah Quraishi, tehsil chairman for the Harban-Bhasha area, told Dawn.com that police and residents vacated their quarters when the water flow in the Lachi nullah increased.

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The tehsil chairman said “it seems there will be a food shortage in Upper Kohistan and Gilgit-Baltistan” because the Karakoram Highway was getting blocked on a daily basis.

He also said the restoration of the highway’s stretch swept away today may take a week or more.

The Karakoram Highway was blocked at nine different locations in the limits of Diamer on Sunday and was opened for light traffic at midnight but got blocked again in the evening today.

The Karakoram Highway is one of the international routes in Pakistan that connects the country with China at Khunjerab and over a million tourists travel on it to visit the scenic places of GB in the summer season.