Flooding in northern Afghanistan claims 50 lives, thousands forced to flee homes
Flooding in a remote part of northern Afghanistan has claimed more than 50 lives and forced thousands to flee their homes, a provincial official said Saturday. It was the latest in a string of deadly flash floods, landslides and avalanches in Afghanistan’s rugged northern mountains, where roads are poor and many villages are virtually cut off from the rest of the country.
Lt. Fazel Rahman, the police chief in the Guzirga i-Nur district of the northeastern Baghlan province, said 54 bodies have been recovered, including the remains of women and children, but many others are still missing. He said the death toll could climb to 100 and called for emergency assistance from the central government.
“So far no one has come to help us. People are trying to find their missing family members,” Rahman said, adding that the district’s police force was overstretched by the scale of the disaster.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said two Army helicopters have been sent to the area to provide assistance.
The Afghanistan Natural Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) has stockpiles of food and other supplies in Baghlan province and has started the process of shipping them to the affected area, said Mohammad Aslim Sayas, deputy director of the agency.
He said a delegation has been sent to the affected villages to assess needs.
Guzirga i-Nur district is located more than 140 kilometers (85 miles) north of the provincial capital Puli Khumri.
Jawed Basharat, the spokesman for the Baghlan provincial police, said they were aware of the flooding, but that it would take eight to nine hours for them to reach the area by road.
Afghans living in the northern mountains have largely been spared from the country’s decades of war, but are no strangers to natural disasters.
Last month a landslide triggered by heavy rain buried large sections of a remote northeastern village in the Badakhshan province bordering China, displacing some 700 families. Authorities have yet to provide an exact figure on the number of dead from the May 2 landslide, and estimates have ranged from 250 to 2,700. Officials say it will be impossible to dig up all the bodies.
A landslide in Baghlan province in 2012 killed 71 people. After days of digging unearthed only five bodies, authorities decided to halt the recovery effort and turn the area into a memorial for the dead.
Tags: Afghanistan Natural Disaster Management Authority, Baghlan province, Fazel Rahman, landslide, Mohammad Zahir Azimi, northern Afghanistan
Earth Extremities Search
Earth Extremities Categories
Blog Stats
- 598,527 hits
Earth Extremities
- @ronin19217435 It's a Masonic kiss 20 hours ago
- @healthbyjames The heading 'Ban' is a little misleading Universal Covid jabs to be wound down as under-50s given j… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 day ago
- #Earthquake #MediterraneanSea wp.me/p1IeZh-wte 2 days ago
- #Earthquake #MediterraneanSea wp.me/p1IeZh-wtc 2 days ago
- #Earthquake #Kepulauan #Talaud #Indonesia wp.me/p1IeZh-wta 2 days ago
Earth Changing Top Clicks
Earth Changing Cloud Categories
Earth Extremities Archives
Posts
- MAGNITUDE 5.9 EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN SEA January 25, 2023
- MAGNITUDE 5.3 CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN SEA January 25, 2023
- MAGNITUDE 5.5 KEPULAUAN TALAUD, INDONESIA January 25, 2023
- MAGNITUDE 6.4 SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO, ARGENTINA January 25, 2023
- MAGNITUDE 5.6 NEPAL January 25, 2023
Comments