ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Army personnel are evacuating about 300 people stranded in the Kartarpur town of the country’s most populous province of Punjab after the waters of the Ravi River overflowed its banks and flooded the entire area, state media said on Wednesday.
Kartarpur is a town in Punjab’s Narowal district situated on the western bank of the Ravi, about four kilometers from the Indi-Pakistan border. It is home to the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, one of Sikhism’s holiest sites, where its founder Guru Nanak spent his final years.
Floodwaters in the Sutlej, Chenab and Ravi rivers have forced Pakistani authorities to order mass evacuations of residents from vulnerable areas of Punjab.
“Due to flooding in Kartarpur, around 200 to 300 people are stranded,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan said.
“In coordination with local administration, army troops are working to evacuate the stranded people.”
Social media footage showed the gurdwara submerged in floodwaters.
Ruling Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) party leader Hina Parvez Butt posted a photo on X showing Sikhs and others being rescued by emergency services personnel on a speedboat.
“People are being shifted to a safe location from Kartarpur,” she said.
Pakistan inaugurated the Kartarpur Corridor in 2019, a passage allowing Indian Sikh pilgrims to visit the shrine of Guru Nanak without a visa. The initiative was hailed as a significant confidence-building measure between the two countries and a major interfaith milestone.
Over 800 people have been killed in the monsoon season since June 26, with the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province recording the highest number of casualties.
Pakistani officials say the current spell is likely to last until at least Sept. 10 and could rival the 2022 floods, which killed more than 1,700 people and caused over $30 billion in damage.
