Heavy rain and wild storm plays havoc in Pakistani port city

A wild storm and heavy rains lashed Pakistan's largest city, collapsing houses, flooding streets and leaving at least 22 people dead, an official said Friday.

Photo: Heavy rain and wild storm plays havoc in Pakistani port city

Officials were still trying to assess the damage from the storm that hit Karachi, a teeming city of about 15 million people, late Thursday.

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Anwar Kazi, a spokesman for private relief service the Edhi Foundation, said his organization had pulled at least 22 bodies from collapsed buildings, and had rescued 24 injured people. Dawn News television reported that others had died from electrocution.

Local television showed residents standing in waist-deep water in parts of the city, and houses and other buildings inundated.

Zaheer Babar, from Pakistan's Meteorological Department, said the storm was the result of a monsoon weather system that formed in the Bay of Bengal - more than 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away on the other side of the Indian peninsula - and made its way to southern Pakistan's Sindh province on Thursday.

"This weather system is causing rains in Karachi and elsewhere," he said.