A severe heat wave continued to grip Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, for a third week, filling hospitals with patients and morgues with goats, authorities and rescuers said on Thursday.
More than 50 people have died so far from heatstroke since the latest wave began last month, police spokeswoman Summiya Syed said.
Dozens of new victims were taken to the city’s largest Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center on Wednesday, hospital spokesman Hassan Ali told dpa.
The heat index – a combination of temperature and humidity – rose to 55 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, the highest level ever recorded in the coastal city of more than 20 million people, said chief meteorologist Sardar Sarfraz.
“This is unbearable in many ways. This happens because the sea breeze has stopped and the humidity has risen to 55%,” she said.
A charity that runs the city’s biggest ambulance service and several morgues said the real death toll could be much higher than officially known figures.
Rescuers from the charity Edhi Foundation collected more than 140 bodies on Wednesday, against the usual daily average of 30 to 40.
“This has been a trend since the start of the heat wave. Our daily number exceeds 100 every day,” the charity’s spokesperson Mohamed Amin told dpa.
It is the second heat wave to hit this climate-vulnerable South Asian country this year. Temperatures rose beyond 50 degrees in several cities during the first, in early June.
