Punjab Emergency Service Department/Facebook
“I haven’t seen destruction of this scale, I find it very difficult to put into words … it is overwhelming,” said Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in an interview with Reuters, adding many crops that provided much of the population’s livelihoods had been wiped out.The South Asian nation was already in an economic crisis, facing high inflation, a depreciating currency and a current account deficit.
“Going forward, I would expect not only the IMF, but the international community and international agencies to truly grasp the level of devastation,” he said.Mr. Bhutto-Zardari, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said the economic impact was still being assessed, but that some estimates had put it at $4 billion. Given the impact on infrastructure and people’s livelihoods, he said he expected the total figure would be much higher.