Lahore, Pakistan’s second most populous city, was flooded today by the worst downpour ever recorded by the country’s meteorological service, according to the agency’s deputy director, Farooq Dar.

The capital of Punjab, which borders India, a city of 13 million people, received “about 360mm of rain in three hours”, Dar said, calling it “a record rainfall”. The previous record, from July 31, 1980, was 332 millimeters.

Several districts and the city’s two largest hospitals were flooded, while electricity was cut in many areas, residents said.

Roads have been flooded, traffic has come to a standstill and commercial activity has been paralyzed.

“The entire state apparatus is on foots”, assured Mariam Sharif, the head of the local authorities, with her post on the X platform.

A man died from an electric shock this morning.

Saddam, a 32-year-old merchant, was trying to clear the water from the basement of his shop.

“We have huge losses. Look at all that water“, he told AFP.

Yasir Ali, 26, said he was thinking of all those who were unable to go to work because of the flooded roads, “the poor people who lost a day’s work,” as he said.

This week at least 24 people, including 11 members of a family, died in floods in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on the border with Afghanistan.

Authorities have warned of unusually heavy rainfall in the first week of August in many provinces, following the heatwave of the previous days, when the temperature even exceeded 50 degrees.

Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events that scientists link to climate change.

The unusually long winter was followed by the April rains – the worst in 63 years – which killed 150 people.

In 2022 a third of Pakistan’s territory was flooded, a disaster that claimed the lives of 1,700 people and affected a total of 33 million.