Heat wave kills more than 120 in Karachi as temperature tops 44C

An intense heat wave killed more than 120 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

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. One of the Karachi’s biggest hospitals, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, reported 85 deaths from heat stroke and dehydration. Thirty-five patients died from heat stroke in other hospitals, doctors said. Two more died from heat-related complications, Mangnejo said.

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