Pak's border villagers face back-to-back evacuations

When floodwaters from across the Indian border surged into her village in eastern Pakistan this month, Shama knew what to do: gather her four children and prepare to leave. It was the second time this year she has had to flee, after abandoning her home during cross-border fighting between India and Pakistan in May.

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"How many times do we need to evacuate now?" the 30-year-old mother said, her husband away ferrying their IO cows to higher ground on a boat. "We lost out on so much during the war like school days for the children, and now the water is forcing us out again. Trouble is trouble."

Shama's ordeal is echoed across flood-hit Kasur, where families say they are exhausted by repeated displacements within months, first from the fighting, now from nature.

"The floods started earlier this month and only got worse," said 27-year-old mother Bibi Zubaida, who lives with seven relatives in a three-bedroom house opposite a mosque that now broadcasts evacuation calls.

From the mosque loudspeakers, usually reserved for the call to prayer, came a different message: boats were ready for anyone who wanted to leave.

"When you live here, you choose to live with the threat of war and the threat of floods. Where does one go?" Zubaida said.