What happened
The first monsoon spell of the season brought torrential rain, flash floods and lightning strikes across Pakistan, killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens by Thursday 2 July 2026, according to authorities and local media. The deaths were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan as the Pakistan Meteorological Department said a fresh monsoon spell that began on 1 July would continue until 6 July.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) said two men were killed when the roof of a temporary mud-and-wood shelter collapsed in Mansehra at around 2am on Thursday, taking the number of deaths in the province since 1 July to nine. Four men, four children and a woman were among the dead, and 23 people were injured. Two lives were lost each in Khyber and Mansehra, while Buner, Haripur, Nowshera, Shangla and Upper Dir recorded one death each. The PDMA said 163 cattle had perished and 41 houses had been damaged, most of them in Lower Chitral after a cloudburst and flash flood.
Earlier, at least four people were killed and 36 injured as the first spell hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Wednesday, Dawn reported. Twenty-one female students were injured in a stampede after lightning struck near their seminary in Upper Dir, and a woman was killed when she was washed away by a flash flood in Shangla’s Puran tehsil.
Chitral and the north
A cloudburst and torrential rain in the early hours of Wednesday caused widespread destruction in Lower and Upper Chitral, leaving dozens of families homeless and cutting off supply lines. More than a dozen houses were destroyed and nearly 100 partly damaged, while two mosques were destroyed and the main Chitral-Peshawar road was blocked, with hundreds of vehicles stranded on both sides. Standing crops of maize, rice and sorghum and fruit orchards were damaged, and drinking-water pipelines were washed away.
In Gilgit-Baltistan, rapid glacier melting and flash floods damaged link roads, bridges and electricity infrastructure. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) issued a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) alert for the Hoper and Hisper valleys in Nagar district, and a flash flood blocked the Karakoram Highway near the Khunjerab Pass. In Punjab, Rescue 1122 said two people were killed and nine injured in the previous 24 hours, including two deaths when a wall collapsed in Attock, Daily Pakistan reported.
Warnings ahead
The NDMA issued a nationwide alert warning of heightened risks of GLOFs, flash floods, landslides and urban flooding across northern and central Pakistan from 1 to 4 July, saying rising temperatures and an active monsoon system coupled with westerly waves were expected to trigger heavy rainfall and accelerate glacier melting. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a nationwide monsoon emergency plan on 1 July, forming an Emergency Response Committee to coordinate with the provinces. The NDMA had warned of thunderstorms, urban flooding and glacial lake outburst risks in an earlier nationwide alert on 22 June.
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