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03-01-2026
KABUL: Heavy rains and snowfall in Afghanistan have ended a prolonged dry spell but triggered flash floods in several areas, killing at least 17 people and injuring 11 others, according to authorities.
The dead included five members of a family in a property where the roof collapsed on Thursday in Kabkan, a district in the Herat province, Mohammad Yousaf Saeedi, spokesman for the Herat governor, said. Two of the victims were children.
Most of the casualties have occurred since Monday in districts hit by flooding, and the severe weather also disrupted daily life across central, northern, southern, and western regions, according to Mohammad Yousaf Hammad, a spokesman for the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA).
Hammad said the floods damaged infrastructure, killed livestock, and affected 1,800 families, worsening conditions in already vulnerable urban and rural communities.
He added the agency has sent assessment teams to the worst-affected areas, with surveys ongoing to determine further needs.
A video clip posted on social media showed a truck overturning due to flash flooding on Afghanistan’s Herat-Kandahar highway near Dasht-e Bakwa.
Another video showed several people desperately trying to escape after their bus overturned in a strong flood current.
Afghanistan, like neighboring Pakistan and India, is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, particularly flash floods following seasonal rains.
Decades of conflict, poor infrastructure, deforestation and the intensifying effects of climate change have amplified the impact of such disasters, especially in remote areas where many homes are made of mud and offer limited protection.
In August, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit Afghanistan near its border with Pakistan, killing more than 1,400 people.
Efforts to rescue people affected by the earthquake were hindered because of flash floods in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, which borders Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The United Nations and other aid agencies this week warned that Afghanistan is expected to remain one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises in 2026.
The UN and its humanitarian partners launched a $1.7bn appeal on Tuesday to assist nearly 18 million people in urgent need in the country.
In September last year, At least 812 people have been killed and 2,817 injured after a magnitude 6 earthquake, one of the country’s deadliest in a decade, struck eastern Afghanistan, according to government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
A Taliban official says the country urgently needs field hospitals, shelter, food and clean water as frantic rescue operations are under way to reach affected remote areas. Several villages have been wiped off the map and communications have been disrupted, complicating rescue efforts. The eastern province of Kunar is the worst affected, followed by Nangarhar, Laghman, Nuristan and Panjshir.
The US Geological Survey says the earthquake struck just before midnight in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. Aftershocks were felt in Pakistan and as far away as India.
The World Food Program says the decrease in aid funding has mostly affected the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan.
“Even before the quake, the reduced funding had forced WFP to drastically shrink our assistance to reach only the most vulnerable leaving millions of hungry people without support,” the agency said.
The Taliban has appealed for more aid as the government is faced with the daunting task of handling a major disaster amid international funding cuts. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
