SHEIKH JALAL, Afghanistan, May 12, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Emergency aid and rescue 
teams struggled on Sunday to reach areas of northern Afghanistan hardest hit 
by flash floods that killed hundreds, AFP journalists saw.

Heavy rains caused flash flooding in several provinces in Afghanistan on 
Friday. 

Northern Baghlan was the worst impacted, with efforts to deliver aid hampered 
by destruction to roads and bridges wrought when the floods ripped through 
the province. 

In Sheikh Jalal, about a two-hour drive from Burka, one of the most 
devastated areas, AFP journalists saw aid trucks full of food, military 
vehicles, rescue workers and local residents stuck where roads had been 
completely washed out.

The military was using heavy machinery to pave the way, as well as to free 
aid trucks stuck in the mud. 

Mohammad Ali Aryanfar, part of a team from the Turkish Hak Humanitarian 
Relief Association trying to deliver food to Burka, said they had been on the 
road since early morning Sunday but were blocked in Sheikh Jalal. 

"Our compatriots there (in Burka) need assistance and we pray that the road 
opens and we reach the area," he told AFP. 

"People's houses have been destroyed and they don't have anything, they don't 
have shelters," he added.

The United Nations World Food Programme shared a photo on social media site X 
of WFP-stamped bags of flour strapped to donkeys' backs, saying it had to 
"resort to every alternative to get food to the survivors who lost 
everything" in Baghlan, as most of the affected areas were "inaccessible by 
trucks".

The Taliban government refugees ministry said on Sunday that 315 people had 
been killed and more than 1,600 people were injured in the flooding in 
Baghlan.
 
More than 2,600 homes have been damaged or destroyed and 1,000 cattle killed, 
it added.

Farmland has also been swamped in the poverty-wracked nation where 80 percent 
of its more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.

WFP confirmed a toll of more than 300 dead in Baghlan to AFP on Saturday. 

Taliban authorities and non-governmental groups warned that the death toll 
could rise.

About 600,000 people live in the five most severely impacted districts in 
Baghlan, according to NGO Save the Children. 

So far this year, "nearly 13,000 people in Afghanistan have been impacted by 
disasters caused by extreme weather, including floods and landslides", it 
said in a statement. 

The country, ravaged by four decades of war, is one of the world's poorest 
and, according to scientists, one of the worst prepared to face the 
consequences of global warming.