Flash flooding has killed at least 50 people in western Afghanistan, provincial police said on Saturday, a week after hundreds were washed away in the north of the country.
Friday’s flooding also destroyed about 2,000 houses and damaged thousands more homes and businesses, Ghor police spokesman Abdul Rahman Badri said.
The fresh flooding in the country comes as survivors of the May 10 flash floods in northern Baghlan province continue to search for missing relatives. “Fifty residents of Ghor province were killed by the floods on Friday and a number of others are missing,” Badri said.
“These terrible floods have also killed thousands of cattle… They have destroyed hundreds of hectares of agricultural land, hundreds of bridges and culverts, and destroyed thousands of trees,” he added. Major roads into and within the province were blocked.
Abu Obaidullah, the head of the province’s disaster management department, said it was an “emergency situation”.
“The floods hit several districts in the province, including the capital Chaghcharan, where the streets “are full of mud”, Obaidullah said. “The situation is really concerning,” he told AFP, adding that victims were in need of shelter, food and water.
Meanwhile, three Spanish tourists and an Afghan were killed Friday in a shooting in the popular tourism destination of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, local and Spanish authorities said.
Afghanistan’s Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani confirmed the four deaths to AFP, saying the victims were killed in gunfire Friday evening in Bamiyan city. Another four foreigners and three Afghans were wounded, he added. Spain’s foreign ministry said later Friday that three of the dead were Spanish tourists, adding that at least one other Spanish national was wounded.—AFP
