Flash flooding has killed at least 50 people in western Afghanistan, provincial police said yesterday, with some residents reaching safety on higher ground mere minutes before the water hit.
The floods on Friday also destroyed about 2,000 houses, and damaged thousands more homes and businesses, Ghor police spokesman Abdul Rahman Badri said in a statement.
The fresh flooding in the country — which has experienced above-average rainfall this spring — comes after flash floods on May 10 in northern Baghlan province washed away hundreds. Survivors there were still searching for missing relatives days after the disaster.
“Fifty residents of Ghor province were killed by the floods on Friday and a number of others are missing,” Badri said.
“These terrible floods have also killed thousands of cattle… They have destroyed hundreds of hectares of agricultural land, hundreds of bridges and culverts, and destroyed thousands of trees.”
A resident of Firozkoh district in Ghor told AFP he and his family raced to higher ground when they were alerted by the sound of aerial firing and urgent warnings over mosque loudspeakers of oncoming flash floods.
“Within five minutes of our escape, a huge and horrible flash flood came and washed away everything. I watched the flood destroy my house with my own eyes,” Zahir Zahid told AFP.
The UN’s World Food Programme and Taliban officials said more than 300 people died as a result of the flood disaster earlier this month, which left homes and roads coated in thick mud.
The destruction of roads and bridges hampered rescue efforts, with United Nations agencies and Taliban authorities warning the death tolls would rise.
The rains come after a prolonged drought in Afghanistan, which is one of the least prepared nations to tackle climate change impacts, according to experts. The country, ravaged by four decades of war, is also one of the world’s poorest.
