SUKKUR/KHAIRPUR, July 5: Sixteen people have died over the past two days as an excruciating heatwave, which has lately singed much of the province, showed sings of a let-up following a monsoon downpour in lower Sindh on Wednesday afternoon.

The deaths from heatstroke occurred mostly in Sukkur, Khairpur and adjoining areas where people have been facing a joint onslaught of sizzling summer temperatures and prolonged spells of power outages.

At least 30 people fainted from the heat in these areas.

Temperatures reached 48 degrees centigrade on Wednesday.

Sukkur’s top health officer, Dr Hafeezur Rahman Memon, told Dawn that eight of the 18 heatstroke patients admitted to the civil hospital had died. He added that three others were in a critical condition.