<\/p>\n
More than 300 people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple Afghan provinces, the UN\u2019s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Saturday, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured.<\/p>\n
Heavy rains on Friday sent roaring rivers of water<\/a> and mud crashing through villages and across agricultural land in several provinces.<\/p>\n Survivors on Saturday picked through muddy, debris-littered streets and damaged buildings, an AFP<\/em> journalist saw, as authorities and non-governmental groups deployed rescue workers and aid, warning that some areas had been cut off by the flooding.<\/p>\n Northern Baghlan province was one of the hardest hit, with more than 300 people killed there alone, and thousands of houses destroyed or damaged, according to WFP.<\/p>\n \u201cOn current information: in Baghlan province there are 311 fatalities, 2,011 houses destroyed and 2,800 houses damaged,\u201d Rana Deraz, a communications officer for the United Nations agency in Afghanistan, told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n There were disparities between the death tolls provided by the government and humanitarian agencies.<\/p>\n The UN\u2019s International Organisation for Migration said there were 218 deaths in Baghlan.<\/p>\n Abdul Mateen Qani, spokesman for the interior ministry, told AFP<\/em> that 131 people had been killed in Baghlan, but that the government toll could rise.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people are still missing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Another 20 people were reported dead in northern Takhar province and two in neighbouring Badakhshan, he added.<\/p>\n Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, \u201cHundreds of our fellow citizens have succumbed to these calamitous floods,\u201d in a statement posted to social media site X earlier today.<\/p>\n \u201cMoreover, the deluge has wrought extensive devastation upon residential properties, resulting in significant financial losses,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The Foreign Office (FO) extended its condolence on behalf of the government and the nation.<\/p>\n \u201cOur thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims, injured and the communities affected by this natural calamity and we pray for the early recovery of those missing.<\/p>\n \u201cPakistan stands in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan during this difficult time,\u201d the FO said.<\/p>\n Rains on Friday caused heavy damage in Baghlan, Takhar and Badakhshan, as well as western Ghor and Herat provinces, officials said, in a country wracked by poverty and heavily dependent on agriculture.<\/p>\n \u201cMy house and my whole life was swept away by the flood,\u201d said Jan Mohammad Din Mohammad, a resident of Baghlan provincial capital Pul-i-Khumri.<\/p>\n His family had managed to flee to higher ground but when the weather cleared and they returned home, \u201cthere was nothing left, all my belongings and my house had been destroyed\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know where to take my family \u2026 I don\u2019t know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Emergency personnel were rushing to rescue injured and stranded people, according to the defence ministry.<\/p>\n The ministry ordered multiple branches of the military \u201cto provide any kind of assistance to the victims of this incident with all available resources\u201d.<\/p>\n The air force said it had started evacuation operations as the weather cleared, adding that more than 100 injured people had been transferred to hospital, without specifying from which provinces.<\/p>\n \u201cBy announcing the state of emergency in [affected] areas, the Ministry of National Defence has started distributing food, medicine and first aid to the impacted people,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n An AFP<\/em> journalist saw a vehicle laden with food and water in Baghlan\u2019s Baghlan-i-Markazi district, as well as others carrying the dead to be buried.<\/p>\n Since mid-April, flash flooding and other floods had left about 100 people dead in 10 of Afghanistan\u2019s provinces, with no region entirely spared, according to authorities.<\/p>\n Farmland has been swamped in a country where 80 per cent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.<\/p>\n Afghanistan \u2014 which had a relatively dry winter, making it more difficult for the soil to absorb rainfall \u2014 is highly vulnerable to climate change.<\/p>\n The nation, ravaged by four decades of war, is one of the poorest in the world and, according to scientists, one of the worst prepared to face the consequences of global warming.<\/p>\n The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said on X the floods were \u201ca stark reminder of Afghanistan\u2019s vulnerability to the climate crisis\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth immediate aid and long-term planning by the Taliban and international actors are needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Mohammed Khater, deputy head of the UN\u2019s humanitarian affairs office in Afghanistan, said the high toll was due in part to people living near waterways, and that deaths were common during the seasonal rains.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an everyday incident during this season, the rainy season,\u201d Khater told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than 300 people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple Afghan provinces, the UN\u2019s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Saturday, as authorities declared a state of emergency and rushed to rescue the injured. Heavy rains on Friday sent roaring rivers of water and mud crashing through villages and across agricultural land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/05\/11223119250ab2b.jpg?r=223157","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}State of emergency<\/h2>\n