Afghanistan floods blamed for dozens of deaths as severe storms wreak havoc in the country’s east

Flash floods, high winds and heavy rain brought by a series of storms have devastated eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 40 people and causing widespread destruction, according to officials and aid workers. The hardest-hit area has been in and around Jalalabad city, the capital of Nangarhar province.

As of Tuesday evening, the Taliban-run Afghan government’s Ministry of Public Health put the death toll at 40 and said almost 350 others had been injured.

Hundreds of houses were destroyed, leaving residents stranded without access to basic services and suspectable to infectious disease.

“Public health personnel have been ordered to provide health services with full sincerity in order to prevent the spread of diseases and provide the best health service to the injured,” Sharafat Zaman, a spokesman for the ministry, said in a statement.

He warned that the death toll could rise as many people were still missing or in critical condition in regional hospitals.

“The military has been ordered to use all the facilities at their disposal to save people and provide shelter, food and medicine to the displaced families,” the Taliban regime’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement posted on social media.

Nangarhar province was still reeling from devastating floods that struck about two months earlier when the severe weather returned and, according to the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee charity, numerous families were still living outdoors while work continued to repair or rebuild their homes.

In the province’s Surkhrod district, five members of the same family, including children, were killed when the roof of their house collapsed and four other family members were wounded, according to Sediqullah Quraishi, a spokesman for the Nangarhar information and culture department.

Images shared on social media showed uprooted trees, toppled electricity poles, collapsed roofs and perilously exposed electrical wires dangling over some homes still standing.

“11 family members of the same family are trapped here,” said one person as they shot video on their cell phone and others dug through rubble with their bare hands.

“As part of the response efforts, the International Rescue Committee in Afghanistan is mobilizing teams to provide crucial support to the affected areas and deploying teams to conduct assessments and provide emergency health services to those in need,” IRC director Salma ben Aissa said in a statement.

According to local disaster management officials, the flooding has also caused severe damage to roads and other infrastructure, homes and crops in the neighboring provinces of Kunar, Panjshir and Kapisa.

Increasingly common and increasingly severe weather events across Asia have been attributed to climate change, and Ben Aissa appealed for more help for the impoverished population of Afghanistan to help deal with the effects.

“The continuation of climate-induced disasters in Afghanistan ought to be cause for grave concern: decades of conflict and economic crisis has meant that the country has faced setback after setback as it tries to find its feet. The sad reality is that without a massive increase in support from donors and the international community, many more will lose their lives,” she said.