Forty dead in heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan; 17 dead in bus crash

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others, Taliban officials said Tuesday. At least 17 people were also killed when a bus overturned on a major highway, official media reported.

Sharafat Zaman Amar, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, confirmed that 40 people were killed in Monday’s storm and 347 injured people from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and surrounding districts were taken to the regional hospital in Nangarhar for treatment.

Among the dead were five members of the same family who died when the roof of their house in Surkh Rod district collapsed, said provincial spokesman Sediqullah Quraishi. Four other family members were injured.

In Nangarhar province, around 400 houses and 60 electricity pylons were destroyed, Quraishi said. Power was out in many areas and communications were limited in the city of Jalalabad, he said. The damage is still being assessed, Quraishi said.

Abdul Wali, 43, said much of the damage occurred within an hour. “The wind was so strong that it blew everything up into the air. Then heavy rain followed,” he said. His four-year-old daughter suffered minor injuries, he said.

According to the World Food Programme, exceptionally heavy rains in May killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of homes, mainly in the northern province of Baghlan.

Separately, the official Taliban news agency Bakhtar reported that at least 17 people were killed and 34 others injured when a bus overturned on the main road between Kabul and Balkh in the northern province of Baghlan on Tuesday morning.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, but poor road conditions and reckless driving are often blamed for such incidents in the country.