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NEW YORK: An off-duty New York Police Department officer fatally shot a man pointing a fake gun at the officer on Friday night on Staten Island, according to law enforcement.

At about 8 p.m., a 911 call came in about a man with a gun at the back of a diner, Assistant Chief Melissa Eger, of the NYPD Patrol Borough of Staten Island, said during a news conference.

An off-duty officer then spotted the same man with what appeared to be a firearm and told another off-duty officer, said Eger.

They told the man to put the firearm down but instead he pointed it at the officers, said Eger, who added that surveillance video captured the events. One officer then fired at the man.

The officers “performed life-saving measures” and then the man was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, she said.

“Our officers were confronted with a dangerous and unpredictable situation, and they attempted to de-escalate the situation multiple times,” she said.

An imitation firearm was found at the scene, she said.

The shooting is being investigated.

She said the man has a criminal history, but the details were not immediately clear.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: The death toll from heavy rains and flooding in Pakistan has crossed 300, local officials said on Saturday.

The majority of the deaths were recorded in mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

Five others, including two pilots, were killed when a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government helicopter crashed due to bad weather during a mission to deliver relief goods, the chief minister of the province, Ali Amin Gandapur, said in a statement.

The provincial government has declared the severely affected mountainous districts of Buner, Bajaur, Mansehra and Battagram as disaster-hit areas.

In Bajaur, a tribal district abutting Afghanistan, a crowd amassed around an excavator trawling a mud-soaked hill, AFP photos showed.

Funeral prayers began in a paddock nearby, with people grieving in front of several bodies covered by blankets.

The meteorological department has issued a heavy rain alert for the northwest, urging people to avoid “unnecessary exposure to vulnerable areas.”

In the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, a region divided with Pakistan, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble on Friday after a flood crashed through a Himalayan village, killing at least 60 people and washing away dozens more.

The monsoon season brings South Asia about three-quarters of its annual rainfall, vital for agriculture and food security, but it also brings destruction.

Landslides and flash floods are common during the season, which usually begins in June and eases by the end of September.

Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, a representative of the national disaster agency, told AFP that this year’s monsoon season began earlier than usual and is expected to end later.

“The next 15 days, particularly from August 16 till the 30th of August, the intensity of the monsoon will further exacerbate,” he added.

The provincial government has declared Saturday as a day of mourning, chief minister Gandapur said.

“The national flag will fly at half-mast across the province, and the martyrs will be laid to rest with full state honors,” the statement from his office said.

Scientists say that climate change has made weather events around the world more extreme and more frequent.

Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, and its population is contending with extreme weather events with increasing frequency.

The torrential rains that have pounded Pakistan since the start of the summer monsoon, described as “unusual” by authorities, have killed more than 320 people, nearly half of them children.

In July, Punjab, home to nearly half of Pakistan’s 255 million people, recorded 73 percent more rainfall than the previous year and more deaths than in the entire previous monsoon.

In 2022, monsoon floods submerged a third of the country and killed 1,700 people.