ISLAMABAD (AP) — Renewed heavy rains have led to more flash floods in Afghanistan, killing at least 15 people, including 10 members of the same family in the northeast, officials said Sunday.
The unusually heavy seasonal rains have wreaked havoc in several parts of the country, killing hundreds of people and destroying property and crops. The UN Food Agency warned that survivors could not earn a living.
The floods on Saturday evening affected the northeastern provinces of Badakhshan and the northern Baghlan provinces, with the latter already suffering heavily from rain earlier this month.
The family – a couple of parents and their eight children – were reported dead in Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, said Mohammad Akram Akbari, director of the province’s provincial natural disaster management department, adding that rescue teams were only able to recover the victims . mother’s body.
In Baghlan province, Edayatullah Hamdard, provincial director of natural disaster management, said at least 40 houses were destroyed and several people were killed in Doshi district, but he could not provide further details.
However, a local official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, reported that five bodies had been found in the province so far and that rescue teams were searching for more.
Earlier, the World Food Program said exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan on May 10 and 11 had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of homes, mainly in the northern province of Baghlan. The survivors are left with no home, no land, and no source of income, the WFP said.
Fifty people were killed in the western province of Ghor on May 18 due to flooding.
On May 19, at least 84 people were killed and some 1,500 houses were partially or completely destroyed in northern Faryab, while hundreds of hectares of agricultural land were lost.
The latest disaster followed devastating floods that killed at least 70 people in April. The waters also destroyed about 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools in western Farah and Herat, and the southern provinces of Zabul and Kandahar.
