Overnight flash floods late Saturday night caused by torrential rain in central Afghanistan led to 26 deaths with more than 40 people missing, officials said Sunday. Shafiullah Rahimi, spokesman for the State Ministry for Disaster Management informed that a total of 31 people had been killed since Friday in the floods which have also caused extensive damage to property and farmland, news agency AFP reported. More than 600 houses have been fully or partially damaged, as per the Taliban Government.
Taliban Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated that urgent aid was being given to the main disaster zone in the Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak province, as per AFP's report. Even though Afghanistan lies on the western edge of the Asian monsoon footprint, flash floods happen during the wet season regularly when heavy rain courses down dry riverbeds.
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604 houses have been fully or partially damaged and hundreds of acres of agricultural land and orchards destroyed in Jalrez since Friday, Rahimi told a news conference, the report mentioned. In Afghanistan, "in the last four months, 214 people were killed in natural disaster-related incidents", Rahimi said.
According to Associated Press, Mujahid said that around 40 people are missing after the flash flooding in the Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak province, west of Kabul.
The provincial governor's office in a statement also informed that hundreds of homes were either damaged or destroyed while the missing people are believed to be under the debris of collapsed houses, AP reported.
The statement also mentioned that hundreds of hectares of agricultural land were washed out and destroyed while the highway between the capital Kabul and the central Bamiyan province was also shut down due to the floods.
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