Pakistan heatwave kills nearly 150 in Karachi as electricity grid crashes during Ramadan

An intense heatwave killed nearly 150 people over the weekend in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi, officials said on Monday, as the electricity grid crashed during the first days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The outages hit large portions of Pakistan’s financial heart and home to 20 million people, where residents lit bonfires in protest.

“Hundreds of patients suffering from the heat wave are being treated at government hospitals,” Saeed Mangnejo, health secretary for the province of Sindh, said.

Temperatures soared to 44 degrees Celsius on Saturday and hovered at 43 degrees on Sunday, coinciding with a surge of demand for power as families observed Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight hours.

Both the federal government and K-Electric, the private company that supplies Karachi with power, had promised there would be no outages during the time when families gathered to break their fast at sunset.

Officials from K-Electric were not immediately available for comment on the scale or cause of the outages, which left many families without water, air-conditioning, fans and light.