(ANN/DAWN) – Officials reported on Tuesday that 29 individuals lost their lives in two provinces in Afghanistan due to hail and heavy rainfall.
“Twenty-one people were killed and six others were injured” because of hail in western Farah province, said Mohammad Israel Sayar, head of the province’s Disaster Management Department. The victims are members of two families who had gone for a picnic, he said.
In southern Kandahar, the regional disaster management department announced in a statement that eight individuals — comprising women and children — lost their lives in multiple areas because of intense rainfall.
“Today, four women who were busy washing clothes were swept away by floodwaters … and only one woman survived,” the statement said.
It stated that a child died by drowning in Kandahar as a roof fell on a family, resulting in the death of one woman and three children.
Among the poorest countries in the world after years of conflict, Afghanistan is especially vulnerable to climate change’s impacts, which experts claim is spurring extreme weather.
It holds the position of being the sixth most at-risk country for climate change.
In 2023, Stephen Rodriques, the UN development agency’s representative in Afghanistan, stated that droughts, floods, land degradation and declining agricultural productivity are significant threats.
Flash floods in May of last year resulted in hundreds of deaths and inundated large areas of agricultural land in Afghanistan, where 80 per cent of the population relies on farming for survival.
