More than 300 dead in flash floods in Afghanistan: WFP | National

More than 300 people died in flash floods in several Afghan provinces, the World Food Program said on Saturday, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured.

Heavy rains sent torrents of water and mud pouring through villages and across agricultural land in several provinces on Friday.

An AFP journalist saw survivors struggling through muddy, debris-strewn streets and damaged buildings on Saturday, while authorities and non-governmental groups sent rescue workers and aid and warned that some areas had been cut off by the flooding.

According to WFP, North Baghlan province was one of the worst affected provinces. There alone, more than 300 people were killed and thousands of houses were destroyed or damaged.

“According to current information, there are 311 deaths, 2,011 houses destroyed and 2,800 houses damaged in Baghlan province,” Rana Deraz, communications officer for the UN agency in Afghanistan, told AFP.

There were differences between the death tolls reported by the government and humanitarian organizations.

The U.N. migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, said there had been 218 deaths in Baghlan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told AFP that 131 people were killed in Baghlan but the government’s casualty toll could rise.

“Many people are still missing,” he said.

Another 20 people were reported dead in the northern province of Takhar and two in neighboring Badakhshan, he added.

Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement posted on X on Saturday: “Hundreds of our fellow citizens have fallen victim to these catastrophic floods.”

“In addition, the flood caused extensive damage to residential properties, resulting in significant financial losses,” he added.

Rains on Friday caused heavy damage in Baghlan, Takhar and Badakhshan as well as the western provinces of Ghor and Herat, officials said, in a country plagued by poverty and heavily dependent on agriculture.

“My house and my whole life were washed away by the flood,” said Jan Mohammad Din Mohammad, a resident of Baghlan provincial capital Pol-e-Khomri.

His family managed to escape to higher ground, but when the weather improved and they returned home, “there was nothing left, all my belongings and my house were destroyed,” he said.

“I don’t know where to take my family… I don’t know what to do.”

– Emergency –

According to the Defense Ministry, rescue workers rushed to rescue injured and stranded people.

The ministry ordered several military units to “provide all kinds of assistance to the victims of this incident using all available means.”

The air force said it began evacuation operations as the weather cleared on Saturday, adding that more than a hundred injured people had been taken to hospital, although it did not specify from which provinces.

“With the declaration of a state of emergency in the (affected) areas, the Ministry of Defense has started distributing food, medicine and first aid to the affected people,” it said.

An AFP journalist saw a vehicle loaded with food and water and other vehicles transporting the dead for burial in Baghlan-i-Markazi district of Baghlan.

Since mid-April, flash floods and other flooding in ten Afghan provinces have killed around 100 people, although no region has been completely spared, according to authorities.

Farmland was flooded in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people rely on agriculture to survive.

Afghanistan – which had a relatively dry winter, making it harder for the soil to absorb rain – is highly vulnerable to climate change.

The country, devastated by four decades of war, is one of the poorest in the world and, according to scientists, one of the countries least prepared for the consequences of global warming.

The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said on X that the floods were “a stark reminder of Afghanistan’s vulnerability to the #climatecrisis”.

“Both immediate assistance and long-term planning by the #Taliban and international actors are needed.”

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