Afghan landslide rescue now focuses on displaced

Monday, 5 May 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Reuters: Afghan officials gave up hope on Saturday of finding any survivors from a landslide in the remote northeast, with the number killed or missing put at between a few hundred and as many as 2,700. The United Nations said the focus now was on helping more than 4,000 displaced people. International organisations and Afghan officials said at least 300 mud brick homes were buried on Friday, but precise information on the number killed was hard to come by in the impoverished province bordering Tajikistan.

The UN mission in Afghanistan said more than 350 people were killed, but a spokesman for the local governor put the number in excess of 2,100. The Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 2,700 were dead or missing. “The scale of this landslide is absolutely devastating, with an entire village practically wiped away,” IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission Richard Danziger said. “Hundreds of families have lost everything and are in immense need of assistance.” The United Nations said the focus was now on the more than 4,000 people displaced, either directly as a result of the landslide or as a precautionary measure from villages assessed to be at risk. The IOM said over 14,000 people were affected. Their main needs are water, medicine, food and emergency shelter, said Ari Gaitanis, a spokesman from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Officials expressed concern the unstable hillside above the site of the disaster may cave in again, threatening the homeless as well as the UN and local rescue teams working there. Villagers and a few dozen police, equipped with only basic digging tools, resumed their search when daylight broke but it soon became clear there was no hope of finding survivors buried in the deep mud and rubble. “Seven members of my family were here, four or five of them were killed ... I am also half alive, what can I do?” said an elderly woman, her hair covered in a pink shawl. Dotted with villages of mud-brick homes nestled in valleys beside bare slopes, Badakhshan province has been hit by several deadly landslides in recent years. The side of the mountain above Abi-Barak collapsed at around 11 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Friday as people were trying to recover belongings and livestock after a smaller landslip hit a few hours earlier. Hundreds of homes were destroyed in the landslides that were triggered by torrential rain. Officials worry another section of the mountainside could collapse at any time. The Afghan military flew rescue teams to the area on Saturday, as the remote mountain region is served by only narrow, poor roads which have themselves been damaged by more than a week of heavy rain.