Nearly 60 people were dead and 100 still missing days after flash floods washed away mudbrick villages in western Afghanistan, officials said Saturday as Nato choppers flew in emergency aid.
Health Minister Mohammad Amin Fatemi said a team of doctors had also been despatched to the remote western province of Badghis while the rural ministry said it was trying to get supplies to the "thousands of victims" by road.
Fifty-six bodies had been recovered after floods hit the province on Thursday, Fatemi told AFP. Most of the bodies were found in the Murghab district and eight in neighbouring Ghormach, both bordering Turkmenistan. The head of a government-appointed disaster committee, Habibullah Murghabi, told AFP from the rural province that around 100 people were still missing two days after the floods.
Ten to 15 villages in the two districts have been "heavy hit", said the Italian-led Nato International Security Assistance Force based in the western city of Herat.
Fatemi said the flood waters had damaged nearly 3,500 houses, most of them built from mud bricks, and killed around 2,300 heads of livestock.