Two of the homes damaged by flash floods outside Kabul.
KABUL: At least 22 people in Afghanistan were killed and farmland was damaged when flash floods hit a plain near the capital, officials said yesterday.
Normally arid Afghanistan gets heavy rain during summer.
Last week flooding in six eastern and southeastern provinces and some districts of Kabul killed more than 40 people, destroying hundreds of hectares of farmland and displacing hundreds of people.
Fresh floods followed hours of torrential rain and hail on Saturday, with the Shomali plain north of Kabul and a mosque, particularly hard hit.
Six of the dead were children, said senior Kabul police officer, Sayed Ekramuddin Jalal.
“We have already sent teams of rescuers to the area and taken people out to safety,” he said.
Several people were injured and about a dozen homes were washed away.
Many irrigation canals and wells, as well as orchards and fields were also damaged, he said.
Some victims were visiting relatives for Eid Al Fitr holiday, he said.
Two women were killed and four men were injured in flooding elsewhere, said Ghulam Farouq, an official at the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness.
The flooding hit the Shakardara and Paghman districts to the north and west of Kabul after unseasonal rains left knee-deep water across many parts of the war-battered city.
“Twenty people, including several children and a woman, were killed in Shakardara,” Farouq said.
“One person was killed in Paghman and more than 20 houses were destroyed in Kabul city.”
Three schools and some crops were also damaged by the torrential downpours.
Harsh winters and heavy snowfalls often cause swollen rivers that lead to floods in the mountainous country in spring and summer.
But Afghanistan has had one of its hottest summers in decades, and the sudden storms quickly overwhelmed Kabul’s poor drainage systems.
Agencies
