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Karachi
The Indian subcontinent's deadly heatwave has killed at least 450 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi over the last four days alone, a leading non-profit of the South Asian country said on Wednesday (June 26). The Edhi Foundation said it received at least 427 bodies in the last four days excluding Wednesday while the Sindh government on Tuesday released 23 bodies in three government hospitals.
Karachi is Pakistan's port city in the Sindh province and is the largest city in the crises-ridden nation. The soaring mercury crossed 40 degrees Celsius for the third consecutive day on Wednesday (June 26). Such temperatures are too high for coastal areas.
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"We have four mortuaries operating in Karachi and we have reached a stage where there is no more space to keep more bodies in our mortuaries," Faisal Edhi, who heads the Foundation, said.
Edhi Trust is the largest welfare foundation in Pakistan and provides various free or subsidised services to the poor, homeless, orphan street children, discarded babies and battered women.
"The sad fact is that many of these bodies have come from areas where a lot of load shedding is going on even in this harshest weather," he said.
Most of the bodies belonged to homeless people and drug addicts, the Edhi Foundation said.
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"The extreme heat wave got to them as these people spend their entire day out in the open searching for fixes," he said, only to add: "But only the government hospitals or where they were initially taken to can tell you the real cause of death."
On Tuesday (June 25) itself, the non-profit had received 135 bodies at their morgues and 128 on Monday (June 24).
The Pakistani citizens in Karachi and the rest of the country also suffer from long hours of load shedding in many areas. Karachi Electric, the electricity provider for Karachi city claimed that power cuts are happening in the city as the Sindh government still has to clear the dues of Rs 10 billion.
(With inputs from agencies)