Over 120,000 evacuated from central Pakistan as floods leave survivors in scorching heat

JALALPUR PIRWALA, Pakistan (AP) — Rescuers backed by the military evacuated nearly 100,000 people overnight from a central Pakistani city, some of whom described enduring scorching heat in tents and open areas after floodwaters submerged their homes and swept away farmland.

In the past 24 hours, more than 122,000 people have been moved from Jalalpur Pirwala, a city in eastern Punjab province, said Irfan Ali Kathia, director general of the Punjab Disaster Management Authority. Many sought shelter with relatives while others were staying in relief camps, he said.

In flooded districts, most said they received little or delayed aid. The government insists it was carrying out rescue and relief operations simultaneously and that truckloads of supplies are sent daily.

Flooding triggered by weeks of torrential monsoon rains, cloudbursts and water releases from dams in neighboring India has displaced 2.2 million people across Punjab since last month, Kathia told reporters.

At least 61 people have died in flood-related incidents since last month. Kathia said Multan, another key city in Punjab, was still at risk of flooding as levels in the rivers continued to rise. Preparations were underway to carry out controlled breaches of embankments to divert water toward rural areas to protect cities, he said.

“We were able to save many lives through timely evacuations, though some people refused to leave until the water reached their villages,” he said. He added that thermal imaging drones were used to locate survivors.

Zarini Bibi, 45, fled her flooded village near Jalalpur Pirwala by boat with her children.

“I saw doomsday in the shape of this flood,” she said. “My home, which was my dream and my heaven, is now under water. I barely escaped with my children, and everything we owned has been destroyed.”

She said she was left with only the clothes on her back, and was now living in a camp under sweltering heat and with little donated food. “It feels like we have become beggars,” she said.

Another displaced resident, Tariq Ullah, said his relatives refused to host him, and he and his family were now living in a roadside tent.

“Thank God our lives were saved. A house can be rebuilt, but life is given only once,” he said, adding that a local political party, Pakistan Markazi Muslim League, was helping provide aid to families like his.

An Associated Press reporter who reached Daryapur village near Jalalpur Pirwala by an evacuation boat saw dozens of people stranded on the rooftops of homes submerged under several feet of water. They were later evacuated by rescuers.

Emergency services official Muhammad Bilal said rescuers in boats had moved thousands of people to safety over the past two days, and that about 70% of evacuations from nearby villages had been completed.

Military helicopters were also dropping relief supplies on the outskirts of Jalalpur Pirwala, where floodwaters rose so quickly that many residents had little time to flee.

Floodwaters have submerged more than 3,900 villages in 26 districts since Aug. 23, Kathia said.

According to the National Disaster Management Authority, India on Tuesday again shared river data, noting that one Indian river remained at the danger mark, raising the risk of further cross-border flooding in Pakistani areas along the border.

Nationwide, monsoon flooding since late June has killed more than 900 people, according to the disaster authority. Currently nearly 80,000 people are living in relief camps across Punjab, and evacuations also took place in southern Sindh province, where more than 100,000 people were relocated last week.

Sindh was among the worst-hit regions in the catastrophic 2022 floods, which killed 1,739 people across Pakistan.

Associated Press writer Babar Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

A commuter train leaves a railway station through flooded tracks caused by heavy rains, in Hyderabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Pervez Masih)

Villagers get off from a boat after being evacuated by rescue workers from a flooded area following raising water level in rivers, in Jalalpur Pirwala, in Multan district, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

Rescue workers evacuate villagers from a flooded area following raising water level in rivers, in Jalalpur Pirwala, in Multan district, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

Villagers get off from a boat after being evacuated by rescue workers from a flooded area following raising water level in rivers, in Jalalpur Pirwala, in Multan district, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

Rescue workers evacuate villagers from a flooded area following raising water level in rivers, in Jalalpur Pirwala, in Multan district, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Asim Tanveer)

People in car drive and a motorcyclist pushes is vehicle through a flooded road caused by heavy rain in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers have proposed creating a new agency with $2.5 billion to spur production of rare earths and the other critical minerals, while the Trump administration has already taken aggressive actions to break China's grip on the market for these materials that are crucial to high-tech products, including cellphones, electric vehicles, jet fighters and missiles.

It’s too early to tell how the bill, if passed, could align with the White House’s policy, but whatever the approach, the U.S. is in a crunch to drastically reduce its reliance on China, after Beijing used its dominance of the critical minerals market to gain leverage in the trade war with Washington. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a one-year truce in October, by which Beijing would continue to export critical minerals while the U.S. would ease its export controls of U.S. technology on China.

The Pentagon has shelled out nearly $5 billion over the past year to help ensure its access to the materials after the trade war laid bare just how beholden the U.S. is to China, which processes more than 90% of the world's critical minerals. To break Beijing's chokehold, the U.S. government is taking equity stakes in a handful of critical mineral companies and in some cases guaranteeing the price of some commodities using an approach that seems more likely to come out of China's playbook instead of a Republican administration.

The bill that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., introduced Thursday would favor a more market-based approach by setting up the independent body charged with building a stockpile of critical minerals and related products, stabilizing prices, and encouraging domestic and allied production to help ensure stable supply not only for the military but also the broader economy and manufacturers.

Shaheen called the legislation “a historic investment” to make the U.S. economy more resilient against China’s dominance that she said has left the U.S. vulnerable to economic coercion. Young said creating the new reserve is “a much-needed, aggressive step to protect our national and economic security.”

Rep. Rob Wittman, R.-Va., introduced the House version of the bill.

When Trump imposed widespread tariffs last spring, Beijing fought back not only with tit-for-tat tariffs but severe restrictions on the export of critical minerals, forcing Washington to back down and eventually agree to the truce when the leaders met in South Korea.

On Monday, in his speech at SpaceX, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that the Pentagon has in the past five months alone “deployed over $4.5 billion in capital commitments” to close six critical minerals deals that will “help free the United States from market manipulation.”

One of the deals involves a $150 million of preferred equity by the Pentagon in Atlantic Alumina Co. to save the country's last alumina refinery and build its first large-scale gallium production facility in Louisiana.

Last year, the Pentagon announced it would buy $400 million of preferred stock in MP Materials, which owns the country's only operational rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, California, and entered into a $1.4-billion joint partnership with ReElement Technologies Corp. to build up a domestic supply chain for rare earth magnets.

On Wednesday, Trump announced in a proclamation that the U.S. is “too reliant” on foreign-sourced critical minerals and directed his administration to negotiate better deals. He said possible remedies would include minimum import prices for certain critical minerals.

“Reshoring manufacturing that’s critical to our national and economic security is a top priority for the Trump administration,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson.

The drastic move by the U.S. government to take equity stakes has prompted some analysts to observe that Washington is pivoting to some form of state capitalism to compete with Beijing.

“Despite the dangers of political interference, the strategic logic is compelling,” wrote Elly Rostoum, a senior fellow at the Washington-based research institute Center for European Policy Analysis. She suggested that the new model could be “a prudent way for the U.S. to ensure strategic autonomy and industrial sovereignty.”

Companies across the industry are welcoming the intervention from Trump's administration.

“He is playing three-dimensional chess on critical minerals like no previous president has done. It's about time too, given the military and strategic vulnerability we face by having to import so many of these fundamental building blocks of technology and national defense,” NioCorp's Chief Communications Officer Jim Sims said. That company is trying to finish raising the money it needs to build a mine in southeast Nebraska.

In addition to trying to boost domestic production, the Trump administration has sought to secure some of these crucial elements through allies. In October, Trump signed an $8.5 billion agreement with Australia to invest in mining there, and the president is now aggressively trying to take over Greenland in the hope of being able to one day extract rare earths from there.

On Monday, finance ministers from the G7 nations huddled in Washington over their vulnerability in the critical mineral supply chains.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has led several rounds of trade negotiations with Beijing, urged attendees to increase their supply chain resiliency and thanked them for their willingness to work together “toward decisive action and lasting solutions,” according to a Treasury statement.

The bill introduced on Thursday by Shaheen and Young would encourage production with both domestic and allied producers.

Congress in the past several years has pushed for legislation to protect the U.S. military and civilian industry from Beijing's chokehold. The issue became a pressing concern every time China turned to its proven tactics of either restricting the supply or turned to dumping extra critical minerals on the market to depress prices and drive any potential competitors out of business.

The Biden administration sought to increase demand for critical minerals domestically by pushing for more electric vehicle and windmill production. But the Trump administration largely eliminated the incentives for those products and instead chose to focus on increasing critical minerals production directly.

Most of those past efforts were on a much more limited scale than what the government has done in the past year, and they were largely abandoned after China relented and eased access to critical minerals.

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. AP writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to the report.

FILE - NioCorp Chief Operating Officer Scott Honan tells a group of investors about the plans for a proposed mine during a tour of the site Oct. 6, 2021, near Elk Creek in southeast Nebraska. (AP Photo/Josh Funk, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shake hands before their meeting at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - Workers use machinery to dig at a rare earth mine in Ganxian county in central China's Jiangxi province on Dec. 30, 2010. (Chinatopix via AP, File)