AFGHAN FLOOD TOLL HITS 80
As rescuers battle to aid victims
KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN, June 08 - Rescuers scrambled Sunday to deliver food and medical supplies to Afghan families marooned on mountaintops after flash floods killed 80 people in a remote northern district, washing away hundreds of homes and forcing thousands to flee.
The death toll was expected to rise, with scores of people said to be missing in the mountainous district of Baghlan province after torrential rains unleashed the floods on Friday.
The floods come a month after a landslide triggered by heavy rains buried a village and killed 300 people in a nearby region.
The twin disasters highlight the challenges facing underdeveloped Afghanistan’s next leader as the country heads into the second round of the presidential election on June 14.
Relief agencies have distributed some aid, but it is not enough. The problems of the flood-affected people need to be addressed fully
“People have lost everything they had -- houses, property, villages, agricultural fields, cattle,” Baghlan police spokesman Jawed Basharat said about the floods.
“There’s nothing left for them to survive. People don’t even having drinking water,” he said.
Television channels relayed footage of one man wading through a gushing stream of muddy brown flood waters, his back stooped under the weight of a burlap sack.
Basharat said the death toll had climbed to 80. The Afghan army, he added, was battling to deliver aid to the affected families, many of whom have fled to mountaintops to escape flood waters.
Afghanistan’s defence ministry had dispatched two helicopters to deliver aid packages to the area as roads and mountain passes were left devastated by the floods, said Obaidullah Ramin, an MP from Baghlan province.
“Some nine kilometres of roads were destroyed by floodwaters, so officials are trying to deliver aid by air,” Ramin told AFP, confirming that 80 bodies had so far been recovered by authorities.
“Relief agencies have distributed some aid, but it is not enough. The problems of the flood-affected people need to be addressed fully,” he said, adding that he had toured the affected areas.