News Digest

Pakistan flood sinks boat carrying wedding party

Severe flooding sank a boat carrying a wedding party in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Sunday, killing the groom and 17 others. Officials say the army-run boat carrying over 30 people capsized when it hit debris from a dyke that had been blown up earlier in the day to divert waters away from urban areas. The bride survived and was interviewed by a local TV station.

We were many people in the boat and water started seeping in and eventually it overturned. I don’t know who survived and who we lost.

Bride, who did not give her name

Separately, three people drowned in the area overnight, senior provincial rescue official Ali Imam Syed said. The deaths, combined with those from the boat tragedy, brought the overall death toll from recent flooding in Pakistan to 301, he said. Some 276,681 people have been evacuated from flood-hit areas while 1.4 million acres of crops and more than 40,000 houses have been either partly or completely destroyed in over 3,000 villages.