KABUL: More than 300 people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple Afghan provinces, the World Food Programme said on Saturday, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured.
Heavy rains on Friday sent roaring rivers of water and mud crashing through villages and across agricultural land in several provinces.
Survivors on Saturday picked through muddy, debris-littered streets and damaged buildings, a journalist saw, as authorities and non-governmental groups deployed rescue workers and aid, warning that some areas had been cut off by the flooding.
Northern Baghlan province was one of the hardest hit, with more than 300 people killed there alone, and thousands of houses destroyed or damaged, according to WFP.
"On current information: in Baghlan province there are 311 fatalities, 2,011 houses destroyed and 2,800 houses damaged," Rana Deraz, a communications officer for the UN agency in Afghanistan, said.
There were disparities between the death tolls provided by the government and humanitarian agencies.
The UN migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, said there were 218 deaths in Baghlan.
Abdul Mateen Qani, spokesman for the interior ministry, said that 131 people had been killed in Baghlan, but that the government toll could rise. "Many people are still missing," he said. Another 20 people were reported dead in northern Takhar province and two in neighbouring Badakhshan, he added.
Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, "Hundreds of our fellow citizens have succumbed to these calamitous floods", in a statement posted to X earlier on Saturday.
"Moreover, the deluge has wrought extensive devastation upon residential properties, resulting in significant financial losses," he added.
Rains on Friday caused heavy damage in Baghlan, Takhar and Badakhshan, as well as western Ghor and Herat provinces, officials said, in a country wracked by poverty and heavily dependent on agriculture.
Emergency personnel were rushing to rescue injured and stranded people, according to the defence ministry.
The ministry ordered multiple branches of the military "to provide any kind of assistance to the victims of this incident with all available resources".
The air force said it had started evacuation operations as the weather cleared on Saturday, adding that more than a hundred injured people had been transferred to hospital, without specifying from which provinces. — AFP
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