Wedding celebrations turned into 24 funerals

QADIR NAGAR, Pakistan, Aug. 22 — Two days before his wedding, Noor Muhammad spoke on the phone with his mother. Hours later, she and 23 other relatives were dead — victims of devastating floods that swept through their village in northwest Pakistan.

“I cannot explain how happy she was,” Muhammad, 25, said, standing beside the rubble of his family’s once-spacious 36-room home in Qadir Nagar, perched on the banks of a flood channel in mountainous Buner district.

Instead of a wedding, Muhammad returned from Malaysia to attend 24 funerals, including those of his mother, brother, sister, uncles, grandfather, and several children. Only his father and one brother survived, spared because they had gone to pick him up from Islamabad airport. His fiancée also survived; her home lay outside the worst-hit zone.

“The flood came, a huge flood,” he recalled, his voice breaking. “It swept away everything — my home, my family, my life.”

Buner, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Islamabad, has been the epicenter of the latest monsoon disaster, recording more than 200 of the nearly 400 deaths in northwest Pakistan since August 15. Nationwide, at least 776 people have died since the rains began in late June, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. (Reuters)

The flash floods, intensified by rare cloudbursts, destroyed homes, markets, and entire communities. Officials and scientists blame climate change for the prolonged monsoon spell and warn of worsening disasters in the years to come.

“We and our elders have never seen a storm like this in our lives,” said resident Muhammad Zeb, 28. “This was once a beautiful place. Now, everything is gone.”

The military has joined rescue operations, with more than 25,000 people evacuated so far. But with more storms expected through September 10, fears of further tragedy loom.

Only four of the 28 people inside Noor Muhammad’s ancestral home survived. He stood quietly among the mourners, accepting condolences. “What else can we say?” he whispered. “It’s God’s will.”