Flash floods in Afghanistan have killed more than 150 people, government says | Flood News

Thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged in the worst-hit northern province of Baghlan.

At least 151 people have died in flash floods in northern Afghanistan caused by torrential rain, according to the Taliban Interior Ministry.

On Saturday, ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani put the number of injured at 135 people, the Reuters news agency reported.

Heavy rains caused flooding in several parts of the country on Friday, raising fears of a death toll.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government’s chief spokesman, said in a social media post on Saturday that “hundreds … have fallen victim to these catastrophic floods, while a significant number have suffered injuries.”

In addition to Baghlan in the north, the provinces of Badakhshan in the northeast, central Ghor and western Herat were also badly affected, he wrote on X, adding that “the extensive devastation” had resulted in “significant financial losses.”

The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) told AFP on Saturday that more than 200 people had been killed and thousands of homes destroyed or damaged in the worst-hit province of Baghlan alone.

The air force has begun evacuating people and transferring more than 100 injured people to military hospitals, the Taliban Defense Ministry said on Saturday, without naming which provinces.

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

Hedayatullah Hamdard, the head of Baghlan’s natural disaster management department, previously told AFP that the number of victims was “likely to increase”, adding that several districts of the province received light rain into the night.

Residents were unprepared for the sudden surge of water triggered by the heavy rains of the last few days, he added.

Emergency services were “searching for possible victims under the mud and rubble with the help of national army security forces and police,” Hamdard said.

According to authorities, around 100 people have died in floods in ten Afghan provinces since mid-April, with no region completely spared.

Agricultural land has been flooded in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people rely on agriculture to survive.

Mohammad Akram Akbari, the provincial director of natural disaster management in Badakhshan, said the mountainous province suffered “severe financial losses in several areas… due to flooding.”

He said casualties were feared in Tishkan district, where flooding blocked a road and prevented access to an area where about 20,000 people lived.