LAHORE, Aug 5: Low lying areas of central, northern and northeastern Lahore were inundated because of heavy rain last night and during the early hours of Sunday.

A woman died after the roof of her house collapsed in Kasurpura, Ravi Road. Ambreen, 35, was the wife of Qaim Ali.

Muhammad Ejaz, 6, was electrocuted when he touched an electricity pole while bathing in rainwater in Ravi Road’s timber market. Four persons were also reported injured in two different parts of the city as roofs of their houses collapsed during rain.

Rain turned streets and bazaars into rivulets in the downtown and in the northern localities like Misri Shah, Wassanpura, and Shadbagh.

Trading in the city’s main vegetable and fruit market in Badami Bagh became difficult because of the accumulation of rainwater.

Merchants and buyers cursed the city fathers for not solving the age-old problem of accumulation of rainwater during the rainy season.

Almost all parks in the central and northern Lahore looked like lakes. All grounds in Samanabad, the sprawling Iqbal Parks (Minto Park), Circular Gardens and the parks in Shadbagh and China Scheme were submerged in deep rainwater till in the evening.

Unlike Saturday, no major traffic muddle was reported from anywhere in the city mainly because of the weekly holiday.

Weather otherwise remained pleasant throughout the day. The maximum temperature was 31.5 degrees C and the minimum last night 21.2 degrees C with 95 per cent humidity in the morning and 60 per cent in the evening.

The Met office recorded 192mm of rain in Misri Shah, 175mm in the Lahore Fort, 166mm in Shahdara, 140mm in the Upper Mall and 110 at its Jail Road Observatory in the last 24 hours.

It expected partly cloudy weather with chances of rain in the next 24 hours.

WASA: Sunday’s rain added to miseries of Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) after it failed to drain out the accumulated rainwater from low lying areas of the city.

Agency’s field staff who were already struggling to drain out water accumulated at Lakshami Chowk and other low-lying residential and commercial localities of the city following Saturday afternoon’s cloudburst, faced on Sunday morning another spell of rain. “These are very tough days for Wasa as we are really struggling to drain out the rainwater,” an official said.

On the other hand, the Punjab chief minister expressed his displeasure over the performance of the Wasa staff in draining out accumulated rainwater from various localities of the metropolis. He also constituted a committee to prepare recommendations in order to improve entire city’s drainage system.