Kabul, May 8, (dpa/GNA) – Seven members of a single family, including children, were killed when a roof collapsed on them due to heavy rainfall in Afghanistan’s north-eastern province of Kapisa, officials said.
The parents and their five children were sleeping inside their old accommodation when the roof collapsed, an official said on Saturday.
Provincial police spokesman Shayeq Shuresh told dpa that the incident happened in a valley in the province’s Nijrab district before dawn.
Heavy rainfall and flash floods have killed at least 78 people in Afghanistan in the past week, according to the latest update from the country’s National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA).
Thirty people have been wounded and another 32 are missing, ANDMA spokesman Ahmad Tamim Azimi told dpa on Saturday.
Nearly 2,600 residential houses have been damaged, either partially or completely, and 3,600 animals have died, Azimi added.
In addition, transportation routes and more than 2,000 hectares of agricultural land were destroyed.
Heavy rainfall and flooding have been reported in 25 of the country’s 34 provinces since May 1. The country’s western Herat province has been especially severely hit, with hundreds of families displaced.
Seasonal flooding occurs across the country, damaging homes, agricultural land and public infrastructure.
In August 2020, more than 150 people died in 13 provinces due to flash floods.
Afghanistan experienced severe flash floods in 2019 that destroyed more than 10,000 houses and affected around 180,000 people, according to the United Nations emergency aid office OCHA.
GNA