KARACHI, Pakistan

The Pakistani government has ordered an immediate evacuation of over 50,000 residents of the country's southeastern coastal belt as cyclone Biparjoy is heading towards Pakistan and neighboring India, an official said on Monday.

Evacuation orders have been issued for the coastal towns of Shahbandar, Keti Bandar and its adjoining villages, and so far, over 2,000 residents have been evacuated, Salman Shah, the director general of provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), told Anadolu.

“More than 50,000 people of over 9,000 families are to be evacuated from these areas,” Shah said, adding that the evacuation will be completed by Tuesday.

The southern and southeastern parts of Sindh – commonly known as lower Sindh –, including the commercial capital Karachi are bracing for the cyclone, which already has turned "extremely severe," and is likely to make landfall on the Keti Bandar coast of the Thatta district on June 15.

Currently, the Biparjoy is some 600 kilometers (about 373 miles) from Karachi, and 580 km (360 miles) from Keti Bandar, Sardar Sarfraz, an official with the Pakistan Meteorological Department, told Anadolu.

According to the latest developments, Sarfraz said Karachi, which earlier was within the likely landfall zone, is unlikely to be a "direct hit."

However, he added, massive rains and high tides may inundate several seaside areas and islands off the Karachi coast, requiring an evacuation.

In the southeastern districts of Thatta, Sajawal, Badin, Tharparkar, and Mirpur Khas, Biparjoy is likely to dump up to 400mm rains and pack winds up to 100km per hour, he further said.

Now passing through the international sea boundary between southeastern Pakistan and India's western Gujarat province, Biparjoy is "most likely" to hit Pakistan's southeastern coastal areas with tides of up to 4 meters (about 13 feet), possibly flooding seaside areas, Sarfraz warned.

High alert

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has already ordered rescue agencies to make "all-out efforts" to handle the situation in the case of possible floods and heavy rains.

The chief minister of Sindh, Syed Murad Ali Shah, on Monday visited the southeastern coastal districts of Badin, Sajawal, and Thatta to review the preemptive efforts to handle the situation in case of predicted flooding and massive rains.

The government has banned fishing in the open sea until June 20 and suspended the holidays of all rescue workers in the region.

Karachi's city administration, meanwhile, barred public entry to beaches.

Port officials said they already started moving ships and boats docked at the city's two ports to safer areas.

Pakistan's coastal Sindh and Balochistan provinces have been hit by cyclones in the past, but never of this magnitude. In neighboring Bangladesh and India, as well as Sri Lanka, storms have caused major destruction.

The strongest cyclone to hit Pakistan was the 1999 Keti Bandar, a category-3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. It resulted in the deaths of 6,200 people in Sindh's impoverished Thatta district, where Biparjoy is likely to hit.