An official said on Saturday (May 18) that a new round of heavy rain and floods in central Afghanistan has led to at least 50 deaths.
The head of the information department in Ghor province, Mawlawi Abdul Hai Zaeem, told Reuters that the rain starting on Friday (May 17) also resulted in many major roads to the region being cut off, with the exact number of injuries still unclear.
Zaeem added that in the provincial capital of Feroz-Koh, 2,000 houses were completely destroyed, 4,000 houses were partially damaged, and over 2,000 shops were inundated.
According to Al Jazeera, police spokesman Abdul Rahman Badri said the death toll could increase.
“These devastating floods have also killed thousands of cows… and destroyed hundreds of hectares of farmland, hundreds of bridges and culverts, and thousands of trees,” he said.
The floods starting on Friday are the latest in a series of water disasters in Afghanistan. On May 12, authorities reported that floods triggered by heavy rains last week destroyed villages in northern Afghanistan, resulting in 315 deaths and over 1,600 injuries.
The Afghan Ministry of Defense stated that on Wednesday (May 15), a helicopter used by the Afghan Air Force crashed while attempting to retrieve bodies that had fallen into a river in Ghor province, due to “technical problems,” resulting in one fatality and 12 injuries.
Afghanistan is prone to frequent natural disasters, with the United Nations considering the country one of the most vulnerable regions to the effects of climate change.