40 killed and nearly 350 injured in eastern Afghanistan storm

At least 40 people died and nearly 350 others were injured during a powerful storm which brought heavy rain to eastern Afghanistan, Taliban officials said on Tuesday.

Elsewhere, at least 17 people died when a bus overturned on a main highway, official media reported.

Public Health Ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman Amar confirmed that 40 people were killed in Monday’s storm and that 347 others had been taken to the regional hospital in Nangarhar from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and nearby districts.

The dead included five members of the same family who were killed when the roof of their house in Surkh Rod district collapsed, according to provincial spokesman Sediqullah Quraishi. Four other members of the family were injured.

About 400 houses and 60 electricity poles were destroyed across Nangarhar province, Mr Quraishi said. Power was cut in many areas and there were limited communications in Jalalabad city. The damage is still being assessed, he added.

Resident Abdul Wali, 43, said much of the damage occurred within an hour.

“The winds were so strong that they blew everything into the air. That was followed by heavy rain,” he said. His four-year-old daughter suffered minor injuries, he said.

In May, exceptionally heavy rain killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan, according to the World Food Programme.

Separately, the official Taliban news agency Bakhtar reported that at least 17 people were killed and 34 others injured when a bus overturned on the main highway linking Kabul and Balkh in northern Baghlan province on Tuesday morning.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, but poor road conditions and careless driving are often blamed for such incidents in the country.