LAQAYI,AFGHANISTAN, Afghanistan, May  11, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - More than 300
people were killed in flash floods that ripped through multiple Afghan
provinces, the UN's World Food Programme said 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 in several provinces.

Survivors on Saturday picked through muddy, debris-littered streets and
damaged buildings, an AFP journalist saw, as authorities and non-governmental
groups deployed rescue workers and aid, warning that some areas had been cut
off by the flooding.

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.

"On current information: in Baghlan province there are 311 fatalities,
2,011 houses destroyed and 2,800 houses damaged," Rana Deraz, a communications
officer for the United Nations agency in Afghanistan, told AFP.

There were disparities between the death tolls provided by the government
and humanitarian agencies.

The UN's International Organization for Migration said there were 218
deaths in Baghlan.

Abdul Mateen Qani, spokesman for the interior ministry, told AFP that 131
people had been killed in Baghlan, but that the government toll could rise.
"Many people are still missing," he said.

Another 20 people were reported dead in northern Takhar province and two in
neighbouring Badakhshan, he added.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said, "Hundreds of our
fellow citizens have succumbed to these calamitous floods", in a statement
posted to social media site X earlier on Saturday.
"Moreover, the deluge has wrought extensive devastation upon residential
properties, resulting in significant financial losses," he added.

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.

"My house and my whole life was swept away by the flood," said Jan Mohammad
Din Mohammad, a resident of Baghlan provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri.

His family had managed to flee to higher ground but when the weather
cleared and they returned home, "there was nothing left, all my belongings and
my house had been destroyed", he said.

"I don't know where to take my family... I don't know what to do."

- State of emergency -

Emergency personnel were rushing to rescue injured and stranded people,
according to the defence ministry.

The ministry ordered multiple branches of the military "to provide any kind
of assistance to the victims of this incident with all available resources".

The air force said it had started evacuation operations as the weather
cleared on Saturday, adding that more than 100 injured people had been
transferred to hospital, without specifying from which provinces.

"By announcing the state of emergency in (affected) areas, the Ministry of
National Defense has started distributing food, medicine and first aid to the
impacted people," it said.

An AFP journalist saw a vehicle laden with food and water in Baghlan's
Baghlan-i-Markazi district, as well as others carrying the dead to be buried.

Since mid-April, flash flooding and other floods had left about 100 people
dead in 10 of Afghanistan's provinces, with no region entirely spared,
according to authorities.

Farmland has been swamped in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40
million people depend on agriculture to survive.

Afghanistan -- which had a relatively dry winter, making it more difficult
for the soil to absorb rainfall -- is highly vulnerable to climate change.

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.

The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett,
said on X the floods were "a stark reminder of Afghanistan's vulnerability to
the #climatecrisis".

"Both immediate aid and long term planning by the #Taliban & international
actors are needed."

Mohammed Khater, deputy head of the UN's 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.

"This is an everyday incident during this season, the rainy season," Khater
told AFP.