ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's government says the brutal heat wave that hit the port city of Karachi and the country's southern province of Sind in June killed 1,250 people before subsiding.
A government statement on the latest death toll from the heat wave was handed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during a high-level meeting in Karachi, the Sindh provincial capital.
Sharif was in Karachi on Wednesday to assess the situation. The statement says the prime minister was informed that a total of 65,000 heatstroke patients were treated at the city's hospitals over the past two weeks.
The heat wave, which began on June 19, coincided with the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, when Muslims observe a dawn-to-dusk fast and abstain from drinking water. Pakistan is a majority Muslim country.
