Floods threaten Pakistan’s cotton fields, Srinagar ‘drowned completely’
Damage to Srinagar from Kashmir deluge 'unimaginable'; Multan sweats
The main city in Indian Kashmir has "drowned completely" under water, a senior official said yesterday, with the floods now affecting about two million people in neighbouring Pakistan and threatening its cotton industry.
The floods began in Kashmir after heavy monsoon rains and are now progressing downstream through Pakistan, washing away thousands of villages and large areas of important farmland.
More than 450 people have been killed and Pakistan's Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said close to two million had been affected by the floodwaters, which included both those stranded at home and those who fled as the floods hit.
More than 140,000 people have been evacuated across Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province.
Authorities have made plans to blast holes in strategic dykes to divert the turbid brown floodwaters away from Multan, a city of two million and the centre of Pakistan's cotton and textiles industry, a vital export earner.
This year's floods in Indian Kashmir are the deadliest in the territory in 50 years and up to 100,000 people are cut off in the mountainous region.
The waters are beginning to recede, revealing the extent of the devastation in Srinagar,