Pakistan floods claim more lives as wedding party boat capsizes

Twenty-two people rescued after boat carrying at least 35 people went down in rough waters in the Muzaffargarh district

At least 11 people, including a bridegroom and two children, drowned on Sunday when a rescue boat carrying a wedding party capsized in flood-hit central Pakistan, officials said. The death toll is expected to rise.

The boat, which was carrying at least 35 people, went down in rough waters in the Muzaffargarh district of central Punjab province, they said.

"Eleven people have died and 22 have been rescued," Shaukat Ali, a senior local government official, told AFP. "Rescuers are searching for more people missing in the water."

The dead included at least two children and a military official, said Ashiq Malik, medical superintendent of the nearby Nishtar hospital.

Most passengers were members of a wedding party that had requested the use of the rescue boat to take them to a valima, an Islamic wedding reception to mark the consummation of a marriage.

Mashal, the distraught bride told private news channel Samaa TV the boat capsized after taking on water. "I saved my life by holding on to an electricity pole," she added.

The office of Pakistan's president, Mamnoon Hussain, issued a statement expressing "profound grief and sorrow" at the incident. Ali, the official, said an inquiry had been ordered.

Jam Sajjad, a spokesman for Punjab's rescue service, said around 35 people were believed to have been in the boat at the time.

"The family requested to cross the flooded river in the boat and were refused by military officials several times, but they kept insisting," he said.

"The waves were moving fast and the family and other people panicked. They were asked to remain calm, but they continued to panic, causing the boat to become unbalanced and capsize."

Floods and landslides from days of heavy monsoon rains have now claimed almost 500 lives in Pakistan and India.

Pakistan, which has suffered a series of annual flood disasters since 2010, says as many as 2.3 million people have been affected.

Rescue operations on Sunday were concentrated around the central city of Multan, home to 2 million people, where authorities blew up two dykes to try to stop the water inundating the city.

"Multan is practically cut off from the surrounding districts: roads and railway track were submerged," Zahid Salim Gondal, a senior government official, told AFP, adding that 29,295 people had been rescued.

Three hundred villages around Muzaffargarh have been inundated and the flooding has also devastated thousands of acres of the cotton crop.