Heavy rain in Afghanistan collapses a house

AP :

A mother and her six children have been killed in eastern Afghanistan after heavy rain caused their home to collapse while they were sleeping at night, authorities said Thursday – the latest of dozens of casualties caused by extreme weather in the impoverished country in recent days.

Rains that lashed the eastern city of Jalalabad from late Monday until Wednesday morning had damaged the family’s home, which collapsed suddenly overnight, according to Said Tayeb Hammad, police spokesman in Nangarhar province.

The children’s father was injured and transferred to a local hospital, while the bodies of his wife and the vhildren – three boys and three girls between the ages of 4 and 15 – were pulled from the rubble.

“There was a sudden loud sound. We rushed to the scene to see that our uncle was trapped,” said Rahmatullah, a relative who like many people in Afghanistan goes by only one name.

On Saturday, Afghanistan’s National Disaster Management Authority said heavy snowfall and rain had killed 61 people and injured more than 100 across the country, while hundreds of homes have been completely or partially destroyed.

Afghanistan is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, with snow and heavy rain that triggers flash floods often killing dozens, or even hundreds, of people at a time. In 2024, more than 300 people died in springtime flash floods.

Decades of conflict coupled with poor infrastructure, a struggling economy, deforestation and the intensifying effects of climate change have amplified the impact of such disasters, particularly in remote areas where many homes are built of mud and offer limited protection against sudden deluges or heavy snowfall.