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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Heavy rainfall that triggered floods in Pakistan in recent weeks, killing hundreds of people, was worsened by human-caused climate change, according to a new study.
The study by World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who study global warming’s role in extreme weather, found that rainfall from June 24 to July 23 in the South Asian nation was 10 percent to 15 percent heavier because of climate change, leading to many building collapses in urban and rural Pakistan.
Pakistan’s government has reported at least 300 deaths and 1,600 damaged houses due to the floods, heavy rain and other weather since June 26.
Saqib Hassan, a 50-year-old businessman in northern Pakistan, said flooding on July 22 destroyed his home and 18 of his relatives’ homes, along with their dairy farms. His farm animals were washed away, resulting in heavy losses — likely 100 million rupees ($360,000) — for him and his family.
Last-minute announcements from a nearby mosque were the only warning they got to evacuate their homes in the small town of Sarwarabad and get to higher ground.
“We are homeless now. Our houses have been destroyed. All the government has given us is food rations worth 50,000 rupees ($177) and seven tents, where we’ve been living for the past two weeks,” Hassan told The Associated Press over the phone.
Heavy rains cause series of disasters
High temperatures and intense precipitation worsened by global warming have accelerated the pace of recent extreme weather events faster than climate experts expected, said Islamabad-based climate scientist Jakob Steiner, who was not part of the WWA study.
“In the last few weeks, we have been scrambling to look at the number of events, not just in Pakistan, but in the South Asian region that have baffled us,” he said.
“Many events we projected to happen in 2050 have happened in 2025, as temperatures this summer, yet again, have been far above the average,” said Steiner, a geoscientist with the University of Graz, Austria, who studies water resources and associated risks in mountain regions.
Heavy monsoon rains have resulted in a series of disasters that have battered South Asia, especially the Himalayan mountains, which span across five countries, in the last few months.
Overflowing glacial lakes resulted in flooding that washed away a key bridge connecting Nepal and China, along with several hydropower dams in July. Earlier this week, a village in northern India was hit by floods and landslides, killing at least four people and leaving hundreds missing.
The authors of the WWA study, which was released early Thursday, said that the rainfall they analyzed in Pakistan shows that climate change is making floods more dangerous. Climate scientists have found that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which can make rain more intense.
“Every tenth of a degree of warming will lead to heavier monsoon rainfall, highlighting why a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is so urgent,” said Mariam Zachariah, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London and lead author of the WWA study.
Extreme weather’s impact on Pakistan
Even though Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, research shows that it incurs an outsized amount of damage from extreme weather. Pakistan witnessed its most devastating monsoon season in 2022, with floods that killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damage.
According to the United Nations, global funds set up to deal with loss and damages because of climate change or funds set up to adapt to climate change are falling well short of the amounts needed to help countries like Pakistan deal with climate impacts. The UN warns that its loss and damage fund only holds a fraction of what’s needed to address yearly economic damage related to human-caused climate change.
Similarly, UN reports state that developed countries such as the United States and European nations, which are responsible for the largest chunk of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, are providing far less than what’s needed in adaptation financing.
These funds could help improve housing and infrastructure in areas vulnerable to flooding.
The WWA report says much of Pakistan’s fast-growing urban population lives in makeshift homes, often in flood-prone areas. The collapsing of homes was the leading cause of the 300 deaths cited in the report, responsible for more than half.
“Half of Pakistan’s urban population lives in fragile settlements where floods collapse homes and cost lives,” said Maja Vahlberg of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, who also helped author the WWA report, in a press statement. “Building flood-resilient houses and avoiding construction in flood zones will help reduce the impacts of heavy monsoon rain.”
 

LONDON: Israel’s military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, has used Microsoft Azure cloud services to store recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made daily by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since 2022.

The cloud-based storage platform has enabled the execution of lethal Israeli airstrikes and has influenced military operations in Gaza and the West Bank, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.

After a meeting in late 2021 between Yossi Sariel, the head of Unit 8200, and Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, work commenced on a customized, segregated area within the Microsoft Azure cloud platform for the Israeli intelligence agency to store a vast archive of daily communications from Palestinians.

Unit 8200, the rough equivalent of the US’ National Security Agency, had determined that the Israeli military’s servers lacked the necessary storage space and computing power to handle the volume of phone calls from an entire population — about 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and another 2.3 million in Gaza.

Sources revealed that the “a million calls an hour” mantra that spread within Unit 8200 captured the project’s scale, using Azure’s near-limitless storage capacity to collect and store recordings of millions of Palestinians.

The new system allowed intelligence officers to store and replay the content of cellular calls made by Palestinians, uncovering conversations from a wider pool of ordinary civilians. Sources described the system as indiscriminate and intrusive, labeling it as a tool that turned an entire population into an “enemy.”

Israel controls the telecommunications networks in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, the latter has been severely damaged by Israel’s military campaign that began in late 2023, which has resulted in the killing of more than 60,000 Palestinians, including 18,000 children.

In Gaza, intelligence from phone call data in Azure was reportedly used by Unit 8200 to identify bombing targets. Officers would analyze calls from Palestinian individuals nearby when planning airstrikes in densely populated areas with many civilians, sources said.

Microsoft is under pressure from both employees and investors regarding its links to Israel’s military and the role its technology plays in Gaza. In May, an employee interrupted a keynote speech by Nadella, shouting: “How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”

In 2022, the system initially focused on the West Bank, which is under Israeli military occupation. Sources from Unit 8200 said that the information stored in Azure served as a rich intelligence source, and that the Israeli military used it to blackmail individuals, detain them or justify killings afterward.

“When they need to arrest someone and there isn’t a good enough reason to do so, that’s where they find the excuse,” one said, referring to the information stored in the Microsoft cloud.

By July this year, about 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data, roughly 200 million hours of audio, was stored on Microsoft’s Azure servers in the Netherlands, with some in Ireland. It is unclear if all the data is from Unit 8200 or other Israeli military units, sources said.

During the development of the system, Microsoft and Unit 8200 engineers collaborated to implement advanced security measures in Azure, in order to meet the Israeli unit’s standards. The project was highly secretive, with Microsoft staff instructed not to mention Unit 8200, which informed Microsoft that it planned to gradually migrate up to 70 percent of its data to the cloud, including both secret and top-secret information.

“The rhythm of interaction with (the unit) is daily, top down and bottom up,” one leaked document said.

Microsoft responded to the report, saying: “At no time during this engagement ... has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned.”

It added that its “engagement with Unit 8200 has been based on strengthening cybersecurity and protecting Israel from nation state and terrorist cyberattacks”.

Sariel resigned late last year after leading Unit 8200 since early 2021. He is described as a tech evangelist who adopted a vision of military and intelligence agencies migrating to the cloud.

He reportedly accepted responsibility for Unit 8200’s role in the intelligence and operational failure that led to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and the abduction of almost 240 others.

He declined to comment on the report. An Israeli military spokesperson told The Guardian that its work with Microsoft was based on “legally supervised agreements.”

It added: “The IDF operates in accordance with international law, with the aim of countering terrorism and ensuring the security of the state and its citizens.”