Number of dead in Afghanistan flooding rises to 122
Kabul, Aug 27 (efe-epa).- The number of people killed in flash flooding across Afghanistan rose to 122 on Thursday, a day after heavy rains lashed 12 of the 34 provinces and left a trail of death and destruction in the country.
The worst-hit Parwan province accounted for the most 85 deaths, including women and children, with the authorities revising the number of fatalities in the northern region after disaster management officials had on Wednesday reported that 100 people were killed in the provincial capital Charikar.
The flooding also left 150 people injured, most of them from Parwan.
“Out of the 122 people who lost their lives in the flash floods, 85 were killed in northern Parwan province,” Hasibullah Shaikhani, spokesperson of disaster management ministry, told EFE.
Rahmatullah Haidari, provincial governor’s spokesperson, told EFE that the death toll may rise further since rescuers were still clearing the debris of fallen structures in search of the missing people.
Authorities were also working to restore electricity and drinking water supplies, Haidari said.
The authorities said that initial surveys in the 12 provinces hit by heavy rains indicated that 1,500 houses were partially or completely damaged.
They said 1,150 acres of acres of agricultural land and orchards had been destroyed as the heavy rains wiped out all the crops in the affected provinces. Roads were also destroyed in large parts of the country.
Some 600 cattle also perished in the disaster.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered delivery of aid to Parwan and other provinces while expressing his condolences to the victims’ families.
The government has made arrangements to distribute essentials to more than 4,000 affected people and converted school buildings into temporary shelters for those who lost their houses in the areas ravaged by flash floods.
Afghanistan frequently suffers from natural disasters that cause numerous human losses, such as the landslides that killed 2,000 people in May 2014 in the northeast of the country.
Afghanistan is a nation with many of the lowest development indicators in the world and has been at war for decades. EFE-EPA
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