Six people died in floods in central Afghanistan and more than a hundred homes were destroyed, local authorities said on Wednesday (May 24th).
A house was swept away by flooding on Tuesday in the city of Firuzkoh, capital of Ghor province, killing three women and a child, said the spokesman for the provincial governor, Abdul Wahid Hamas. One person is also missing and two others were injured, he added.
'Huge losses'
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People in the area have suffered huge losses," said Bahauddin, 47, a relative of the four victims. In Pasaband district, located in the same province, a woman and a man were also swept away by the waves and found dead, while one person is still missing, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas. "It was raining a lot and torrential floods were coming from the mountains," Abdul Wahid Hamas told AFP. "We don't have any further details on the financial losses at this time." The area hit by the floodwaters on Tuesday "had never experienced such flooding, at least in the last decade," he added.
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More than a hundred houses were completely destroyed, as well as 200 hectares of agricultural land. Two canals that irrigated most of the fields in the area were damaged, the spokesman said. The flooding comes at a time when Afghanistan is already in the grip of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises: some 22.8 million people – more than half the population – face acute food insecurity and three million children are at risk of malnutrition.