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Over 100 dead after avalanches hit Pak-Afghan border

KABUL, February 6, 2017

At least 119 people have died along the Afghan-Pakistani border after three days of heavy snowfall caused a series of deadly avalanches on Sunday.

The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers reach isolated regions where it's feared more people are trapped beneath the snow, according to CNN.

Most of the casualties occurred in Afghanistan, where at least 119 have been killed and 67 are reported injured, said Omar Mohammadi, a spokesman for the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority.

Mohamaddi said that most of the victims were women and children, and that deaths were reported in the provinces of eastern Nuristan, northern Parwan, Sar-e-Pul, Badakhshan and eastern Wardak.

At least 50 were killed in the Barg-e-Matal district of Nuristan province -- to the north of Kabul -- where unrelenting snow has buried villages and closed roads to rescue workers.

Across the border in Pakistan, an avalanche rocked the district of Chitral late Saturday night, when most were asleep, said the report.

In the deadliest incident, 53 people died in one village after an avalanche in Nuristan, a north-eastern Afghan province on the Pakistan border, the BBC reported.

Thirteen people were also killed in an avalanche in northern Pakistan, nine of them in the town of Chitral.
Dozens of houses have been destroyed and people were reported to have frozen to death, trapped in cars, it stated.

At least one soldier was killed in Chitral after snow hit a guard post in a separate avalanche, and six soldiers were injured after the incident.

Chitral is in Pakistan's disaster-prone Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where flash floods killed at least 47 people and left 37 others injured in April.

Sheena Ayub Khan, spokesperson for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province's disaster management authority, told CNN that evacuation efforts are underway.




Tags: Afghanistan | Pakistan | avalanche |

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