Continuing her briefing, the Punjab CM said provincial authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and animals from flooded areas, in what she described as the “biggest evacuation and rescue operation in our history”.

“We are facing a situation we haven’t faced in decades. There has been a continuous effect due to non-stop rainfall,” CM Maryam said. “Our neighbour, India, opened their spillways and all that water came into our rivers, overflowing them.”

The chief minister said the province has a five-tier plan, the first of which is evacuation.

“All commissioners and DCs performed timely evacuations; containing this level of flooding with all resources was not humanly possible,” she outlined.

“We have evacuated and transported around 600,000 people in Punjab, who were moved from inundated areas. Around 450,000 animals have been evacuated as well.”

The CM added that timely evacuations need to be carried out in districts currently under threat from flooding, such as Jhang, Muzaffargarh, Multan and Okara.

“Their preparedness needs to be airtight and they need to be ready for rescue,” CM Maryam said, referring to district authorities. “All districts must use barges to load large numbers of cattle.”