50 KILLED IN HEAVY RAINS IN GHOR AS FLOOD DISASTER CONTINUE IN AFGHANISTAN

An Afghan Air Force helicopter crashed due to “technical issues” while attempting to recover bodies from a river in Ghor.

Sat 18 May 2024:

At least 50 people have died, and thousands of homes have been destroyed due to recent heavy rains and flooding in central Afghanistan, officials have confirmed.

Weeks of torrential seasonal rains have caused flash floods that have devastated large areas of Afghanistan, resulting in hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and widespread destruction of homes and communities.

In the province of Ghor, police spokesman Abdul Rahman Badri confirmed on Saturday that 50 people had died, with the number of casualties expected to rise. He noted that the floods had also killed thousands of cattle, destroyed hundreds of hectares of agricultural land, hundreds of bridges and culverts, and thousands of trees.

The Taliban’s Ministry for Refugees reported last week that the death toll from flooding in northern Afghanistan had reached 315, with over 1,600 people injured.

Afghanistan, highly susceptible to natural disasters, is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change according to the United Nations.

Preliminary reports indicated that dozens of people were missing, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas, the spokesman for Ghor’s provincial governor. Mawlawi Abdul Hai Zaeem, head of Ghor’s information department, said the latest wet spell began on Friday, cutting off many key roads to the area. He reported that 2,000 houses were completely destroyed, 4,000 partially damaged, and more than 2,000 shops were submerged in the province’s capital, Firoz Koh.

On Wednesday, an Afghan Air Force helicopter crashed due to “technical issues” while attempting to recover bodies from a river in Ghor, killing one person and injuring 12, according to the Ministry of Defence.

CCTV footage of a Taliban military helicopter crashing in Afghanistan’s Ghor province.

“The Taliban government currently has a total of 176 helicopters, with around 60-64 of them being operational.” pic.twitter.com/TKLNKxNJDf

— Mahaz (@MahazOffcial1) May 15, 2024

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) highlighted that people displaced by earlier floods were lacking adequate humanitarian aid, leaving survivors without homes, land, or sources of livelihood. Most of Baghlan, the hardest-hit province in the north, remained “inaccessible by trucks,” reported the WFP.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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