MAZAR-I-SHARIF:
More than 300 people were killed and hundreds of others feared dead
after a landslide buried an Afghan village, officials said, as rescue
teams on Saturday rushed to the scene in the hope of finding any
survivors.
Local people used shovels to search for
anyone trapped under a massive river of mud and rocks that engulfed the
village in Badakhshan province, leaving little sign of the hundreds of
homes it destroyed.
The United Nations confirmed that 350
people were dead, and provincial officials said more than 2,000 were
still missing more than 20 hours after the disaster.
Emergency
workers arrived at the scene on Saturday morning to be confronted by
the enormous scale of the landslide, hundreds of homeless families and
the risk of more earth sweeping down the hillside.
Badakhshan
governor Shah Waliullah Adeeb told AFP that 2,500 people were missing.
"Our initial findings based on local people´s reports show around 2,500
people, including women and children, might be dead," he said late
Friday. "It is difficult to get confirmed information from the scene and
we are seeking to determine the facts.
"Provincial
officials said that two successive landslides hit Aab Bareek village
within one hour. Villagers were at Friday prayers in two mosques when
they were entombed by a tide of debris, and the second landslide hit
many who had rushed to assist those in need.
"The number
of deceased has increased to 350," the UN mission in Afghanistan said.
"A response is being mobilised for those who survived but were
displaced, with some partners already on the ground."
The
NATO military Regional Command in the north (is) in contact with the
Afghan National Army in regards to search and rescue efforts.
"Badakhshan
is a remote, mountainous province in northeast Afghanistan bordering
Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. It has been relatively peaceful since
the US-led military intervention began in 2001, but has seen increasing
Taliban activity in recent years.
President Hamid Karzai
expressed his condolences to those affected and said immediate action
was being taken to find any survivors. Local officials said that the
landslides occurred at about midday (0730 GMT) in the Argo district of
Badakhshan after days of heavy rain. Between 350 and 400 houses were
destroyed, they said. "It is a disaster.
The landslide
has affected around 1,000 families," Sayed Abdullah Homayun Dehqan,
provincial director of the Afghan National Disaster Management
Authority, told AFP. "Around 300 families are missing, that could
involve around 2,000 people. People are working to remove the rocks.
"Around 700 families were rescued, we have sent in some basic assistance
such as tents and blankets.
"The UN was helping to
coordinate relief work, but warned that roads to the area could not take
heavy machinery. "The foremost priority at the moment is saving as many
lives as possible of those still beneath the rubble," Mark Bowden, UN
humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, said.
US
President Barack Obama described the deaths as "an awful tragedy" and
pledged to help the relief effort. The landslides follow recent severe
flooding in other parts of northern Afghanistan, with 150 people dead
and 67,000 people affected by floods in Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e-Pul
provinces. Nearly 3,500 houses were damaged and destroyed by the floods,
creating an urgent need for shelter, clean water, medical supplies and
food. Flooding and landslides often occur during the spring rainy season
in northern Afghanistan, with flimsy mud houses offering little
protection against rising water levels and torrents of mud.
In
the last major flooding in Afghanistan, 40 people died in August in
flash floods in eastern and southeastern provinces and some districts of
the capital Kabul.
