Deadly floods, avalanches hit Afghanistan, Pakistan
Pastor Dale Morgan
Deadly floods, avalanches hit Afghanistan, Pakistan*
Reuters
Sunday, April 1, 2007; 8:20 AM
KABUL (Reuters) - Floods and avalanches killed scores of people in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said on Sunday, as heavy rains
destroyed villages, flooded farmland and drove hundreds from their homes.
At least 30 people died in the central Afghan province of Daikundi and
seven in Herat, in the west, on Saturday. Another 11 died elsewhere in
the country, government officials said.
"Six hundred people urgently need to be evacuated by air and are exposed
to danger from rising waters in Uruzgan province," an Interior Ministry
official said, referring to a southern district.
In neighboring Pakistan, an avalanche killed at least 23 people on
Saturday night and rescuers were struggling to find 15 more missing in a
remote village of Turkoh in the Hindu Kush mountains of the Chitral region.
Hundreds of cattle also perished in the heaviest rains for years in
drought-stricken Afghanistan. The floods inundated thousands of hectares
of land and washed away or damaged key bridges around the country,
including in the capital, Kabul.
The floods have also washed away part of a highway and a key bridge
north of Kabul, cutting off links between the north and south of the
country, residents said.
Rains also caused avalanches and landslides in northeast Afghanistan,
where nearly 20 people died last week.
Across the border in Pakistan's Chitral region, senior police officer
Ijaz Ahmed said some communities had been cut off for days due to
landslides and bad weather.
"If it persists there could be food and medicine shortages in some
remote areas," he told Reuters by telephone from Chitral, some 280 km
(175 miles) north of Islamabad.
Flooding swept away at least 20 houses near Chitral city but no
casualties were reported and the residents had been evacuated to safety,
Ahmed said.