Tragedy in Buner: Floods Kill 24 Relatives of Groom-to-Be Ahead of Wedding

Buner: Two days before his wedding, Noor Muhammad had a long phone call with his mother, just hours before devastating floods in Pakistan killed her along with 23 other family members and relatives in Buner, the worst-hit district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The deluge battered remote mountainous districts of northern KP with cloudbursts, flash floods, lightning strikes and landslides in what officials described as the deadliest downpour of this year’s monsoon season.

“I cannot explain how happy she was,” said Muhammad, 25, standing by the rubble of his family’s 36-room house, perched on the bank of a flood water channel in Qadir Nagar village.

The village in Buner district has been the hardest hit by the massive rain, accounting for over 200 deaths out of nearly 400 in KP since August 15. Buner is a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Islamabad.

“Everything was finished,” he sobbed, recalling how nothing remained when he arrived home except rubble and heavy rocks carried down from the mountains by mud and raging floodwaters that swept away homes, markets and entire families.

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Instead of attending his own wedding, Muhammad attended 24 funerals. His mother, a brother and a sister were among the dead, while his father and another brother survived only because they had gone to Islamabad to pick him up from the airport.

His fiancée survived as her home was outside the flood’s worst devastation.