Fresh floods kill 66 in northern Afghanistan

KABUL: A provincial official said on Sunday that ‘fresh floods’ have claimed the lives’ of at least 66 people, in northern Afghanistan. The statement came after weeks of flooding, which has effectively ‘inundated farms and villages’ and ‘swept away swathes of communities’.

‘Hundreds’ of people have died due to flash flooding, this month. The floods have swamped agricultural lands in a country where a staggering 80 per-cent of the population depends on farming, to survive.

The latest ‘heavy floods’ hit multiple districts in the Faryab province, on Saturday night. Asmatullah Muradi (a spokesman for the Faryab governor) said in a statement that the floods “resulted in human and financial losses”.

“Due to the floods 66 people were killed” he said, adding that at least five people were injured and others were ‘still missing’.

The flooding caused damage to more than 1,500 houses, swamped more than 1,000 acres of agricultural land and killed hundreds of livestock, he stated. The floods came only a day after provincial police said that more than 50 people died due to flash flooding in the western province of Ghor.

According to officials from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the Taliban “more than 300 people were killed by torrents in northern Baghlan province” (just over a week ago).

Taliban officials have warned that death tolls are likely to increase in the regions impacted by flooding. Floods have ‘destroyed infrastructure’, ‘hampered aid delivery’ and ‘efforts to find the missing’.

On Sunday, the death toll from the flooding in Ghor rose from 50 to 55, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas, who is a spokesman for the provincial governor. “More than 3,000 homes were totally destroyed due to the floods” in Ghor, he added.

Videos posted on the social media platform ‘X’, by the WFP, showed ‘currents of brown water crashing through walls of homes and churning through streets’ in Ghor.

‘Washed away our life’

Residents in Baghlan, Ghor, Faryab and other affected provinces found themselves ‘without shelter’, whilst also being ‘stripped of their homes and livelihoods’.

“We were inside our home when rain started and all of a sudden, a flash flood came, we were trying to get things out but it washed away our home, our life, everything” a resident of Ghor, Jawan Gul, told journalists’ on Saturday.

In addition to this, the flooding ‘sparked concern’ for the revered 12th-century ‘Jam minaret’ (located in a remote part of Ghor), provincial officials stated.

Images circulating on the countries’ media showed brown torrents ‘crashing around the base’, of the Unesco World Heritage Site.

“The situation of Jam was very concerning” Abdul Hai Zaeem, the director of information and culture in Ghor, told members’ of the press. He added that mud was ‘still piled high around the brick minaret’.

The WFP ‘warned’ that the recent floods have’ compounded an already dire humanitarian situation in the impoverished country’.

Spring floods are not uncommon in Afghanistan, which is a country of more than 40 million people. However, ‘above-average rainfall’ this year has spavrked ‘devastating flash flooding’.

Even before the most recent spate of floods, about 100 people had been killed from mid-April to early May, owing to flooding in 10 of Afghanistan’s provinces’, authorities stated.

The rains come after a prolonged period of drought in Afghanistan, which is one of the ‘least prepared nations to tackle climate change impacts’, according to experts.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2024