© Reuters
A relative waits while volunteers search for a body at the Edhi Foundation morgue in Karachi, Pakistan.
A devastating weeklong heat wave in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi killed 1,233 people, an official said.
Nazar Mohammad Bozdar, operations director at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, said about 65,000 heatstroke patients were treated by doctors at all of Karachi's hospitals since June 20 when the heat wave struck Sindh province, where Karachi is the provincial capital.
Officials say temperatures during this heat wave are the hottest the country has seen in 15 years.
He told The Associated Press that 1,923 patients with heat-related ailments were still being treated.
"The government quickly responded by making arrangements for the treatment of heatstroke patients and the situation has improved now," he said.
Pakistan's deadliest heat wave on record coincided with the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, when Pakistan's Muslim majority observed a dawn-to-dusk fast.
The temperatures in Karachi came down to 93 degrees Fahrenheit after reaching 113 degrees Fahrenheit a week ago amid chronic power outages, which forced many residents to spend nights outdoors.
The heat wave shocked many Pakistanis just weeks after soaring temperatures caused nearly
2,200 deaths in neighboring India.
On Saturday, TV footage showed a charity burying several unidentified bodies of people who died earlier this week because of the heatstroke. Pakistani television stations reported that several unidentified bodies were buried by the Edhi Foundation charity because local morgues were overflowing.
Comment: While the west coast of the US bakes and is bone dry, Europe is experiencing a heat wave of their own with all time record temperatures. At the same time it is snowing in parts of Russia! You can't get much more extreme than that. It is as if the earth is responding with extremes as the human activity heats up. For more on the theory that human activity has an impact on how the universe interacts in kind with humanity read Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.