Floodwaters are posing a severe threat to Kapco power plant and Pak Arab Oil Refinery. Villages and fields only 2kms from Kapco have been inundated.
On the right bank of the swollen Indus, water has entered Kot Mithan, the hometown of Sufi poet Khwaja Ghulam Fareed, in Rajanpur district, after eroding a dyke.
Kot Addu is the second town in the Muzaffargarh district flooded in less than 12 hours. On Monday night, the town of Daira Din Pannah was flooded after the waves had breached the Abbaswala spur near Taunsa barrage.
The flood has so far displaced 300,000 people and caused massive destruction of property. The misery of the displaced people and the problems faced by rescue teams were compounded by incessant rain on Tuesday.
When Daira Din Pannah was inundated, thousands of people took shelter along the banks of the Muzaffargarh and TP link canals but flood waves destroyed the banks at several places and submerged Kot Addu.
“About 30,000 people are marooned in Daira Din Pannah,” resident Ghulam Ali said.
Railway traffic on the Multan-Rawalpindi section has been stopped and Daira Din Pannah has no link with Kot Addu by road or rail.
In Kot Addu, the administration and volunteers asked people to vacate the town because of breaches in the canals.
Local revenue official Qazi Mohammad Zafar said the government had helped 50,000 people to move to secure areas, while many others made their own arrangements and left their homes. He said the scale of devastation was massive and he could not give an estimate of crop losses or human displacement.
All buses and trucks available in Multan were called to Kot Addu to help people leave the area, regional police chief Mubarik Ali said.
He said 300 trucks were employed for evacuating people.
In Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur, thousands of people are camping in the open on higher grounds surrounded by water and face the risk of water-borne diseases.
The exceptionally high flood was still wreaking havoc in Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur. A large number of people have been displaced.
Suburbs of Dera Ghazi Khan and Jampur towns, Kot Tahir and Kotla Mughlan in Rajanpur are facing the threat of inundation.
A 3km portion of rail tracks near Taunsa barrage is under water.
Officials of the irrigation and revenue departments, Rescue 1122 service and teams set up by police and district administration are in the field to help people.
