Families buried, livelihoods lost as Afghan storm toll hits 47
The death toll from heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan climbed to 47 on Tuesday, as victims recounted how the tempest demolished entire homes and buried families alive.
Some 350 people were injured and 400 houses razed as rain and hail lashed eastern Nangarhar on Monday evening, according to the provincial disaster management authority.
Charbagh Safa -- a village outside the provincial capital Jalalabad -- was in ruin by daybreak on Tuesday, a landscape of sucking mud where more than half the houses were gone.
The home of Sajidullah had been packed with relatives eager to meet his brother's newborn baby when the deluge collapsed the building -- killing the new father alongside ten others.
"When the storm came here, the wall fell over them," he told AFP. "I was in the shop when I received the call and I ran here."
"The stream here was flooding so our way was cut off and our injured didn't reach the hospital on time and got martyred."
- Vulnerable after war -
Among the poorest countries in the world after decades of war, Afghanistan is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change which scientists say is spurring extreme weather.
In Charbagh Safa valuable livestock lay crushed under the rubble, crops killed by wind or water, and solar panels providing precious power had blown kilometres away.
Trees were either uprooted by the gales or shaken entirely free of leaves. Many of the houses still standing were riddled with cracks, threatening to cave in.
"When this happened, we came here and the martyrs and wounded were all under the rubble," said resident Samiullah Raeeskhil.
"Our area is far-flung so people tried their best to pull victims out of the rubble and take them to hospital but it took more time unfortunately."
"These people in our neighbourhood are in a very poor economic situation," he added. "They don't have any choice but to live in houses like this, which aren't good quality."
The Taliban government said it chaired an emergency meeting to scramble local and foreign aid agencies "to provide necessary assistance".
However, villagers complained they had received little help. "No one has come so far to deliver the aid," said one, reporting he had only seen Taliban government security forces.
- 'We are poor people' -
The Taliban takeover of August 2021 ended two decades of war but many foreign missions and aid groups fled the country, shrinking the help available to Afghans.
"We want the NGOs and the authorities to help us," complained Mosam, amid the wreck of Charbagh Safa.
"We are poor people, we made efforts and cultivated our crops," he said. "But they all were destroyed so our spending was in vain."
This year, Afghanistan witnessed an unusually wet spring after a very dry winter.
Flash floods in May then killed hundreds and swamped swathes of agricultural land in a country where 80 percent of people depend on farming to survive.
The United Nations says 29 million Afghans inside the country are currently in need of humanitarian assistance.
More than 17 million people -- 40 per cent of the population -- are struggling to meet their basic food needs, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
(V.Blanchet--LPdF)
