Survivors hunt for the missing days after Afghanistan floods

Fulool, Afghanistan — AFP

Survivors of flash floods in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province are still searching for their missing people, days after torrents of water ripped through villages, killing hundreds.

Heavy rains sparked flash flooding in multiple Afghan provinces on Friday, killing more than 300 people in Baghlan alone, UN agencies and Taliban officials said.

Rescue workers and aid have been struggling to reach some of the worst affected areas with the World Health Organization echoing Taliban government and nonprofit warnings that the death toll could rise significantly.

Samiullah Omari had found the bodies of seven of his relatives, but his uncle and uncle’s grandson were still missing.

“We have been searching but we haven’t found them,” the 24-year-old day labourer shared in his village of Fulool.

For kilometres around, mud covers everything, debris and limbs of livestock jutting out from the thick brown sludge where homes once stood.

Neither Omari nor his 70-year-old father have ever seen “such havoc-wreaking floods”, he said.

The WHO has already warned of rising cases of water-borne diseases in flood-affected regions.

In a country with a health system already on its knees, some health facilities were rendered non-operational by the flooding, which damaged or destroyed thousands of homes and swamped agricultural land.

“The full extent of the damage is not yet known, and the country lacks the necessary resources to manage a disaster of this magnitude,” it said in a situation report Sunday.

Omari and some 70 other villagers took refuge in a house on higher ground.

“God protected us along with 60-70 people and we survived it,” he said, but his house and all his belongings were washed away.

All that was left were the clothes on his back.

Scant aid had arrived with Taliban government agencies and a few humanitarian workers, who braved washed-out roads for hours to reach the isolated village with food and water.

Tents had been set up near the village to provide health aid, as government officials surveyed the damage.

“We hope shelter will be provided for us,” Omari said, adding that women and children had been “scattered” to other areas to stay with relatives.

– ‘Start over’ –

Amanullah, who like many Afghans goes only by one name, said families had been sleeping in the open air since the destruction.

“We have an urgent need for tents,” the patriarch of a family of 25 people shared.

“Where should we go, where should we live, there are no tents, no food… we don’t have any life left, or the means to start over,” said the 60-year-old, who watched the waters engulf his home and livestock, a precious commodity in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.

First, the heavy tasks of finding the missing, and clearing the ruined village of thick layers of mud and debris loom over Fulool village and others in Baghlan.

“We are still searching for the dead bodies,” said 45-year-old Ghulam Rasool Qani, a tribal elder in Fulool, who said 150 dead had already been found in his and neighbouring villages.

“We still can’t say the exact number of dead and injured from this area because at every moment, our list of victims rises.”