Death toll from Afghanistan floods rises to more than 300: WFP

KABUL (AFP) - More than 300 people were killed in flash flooding in Afghanistan's northern province of Baghlan, the World Food Programme said Saturday.

"On current information: in Baghlan province there are 311 fatalities, 2,011 houses destroyed and 2,800 houses damaged," Rana Deraz, a communications officer for the UN agency in Afghanistan, told AFP.

In Baghlani Jadid district alone, up to 1,500 homes were damaged or destroyed and "more than 100 people died", an IOM emergency response lead said, citing figures from the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority.

Taliban government officials said 62 people had died as of Friday night.

Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said "hundreds of our fellow citizens have succumbed to these calamitous floods" in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday, without differentiating the numbers of dead and injured, though he told AFP dozens had been killed.

Multiple provinces across Afghanistan saw flash flooding, with officials in northern Takhar province reporting 20 dead on Saturday. Rains on Friday also caused heavy damage in northeastern Badakhshan province, central Ghor province and western Herat, officials said.

Emergency personnel have been deployed to the affected areas and were rushing to rescue injured and stranded people, the defence ministry said. Afghanistan -- which had a relatively dry winter, making it more difficult for the soil to absorb rainfall -- is highly vulnerable to climate change.

The nation, ravaged by four decades of war, is one of the poorest in the world and, according to scientists, one of the worst prepared to face the consequences of global warming.