Update: Plenty of Help, and Plenty of Fighting Over It, in Landslide-Hit Afghan Village
Update: Aga Khan Development Network Supports Relief Effort for the Victims of Afghanistan Landslide
Update: Casualty is in the area which is mostly populated by Sunni Muslims and Uzbek. Getty Image 1, 2, 3, 4.
KABUL, May 3 (Reuters) – Afghan officials gave up hope on Saturday of finding any survivors from a landslide in the remote northeast, putting the death toll at more than 2,100, as rescuers turned their attention to helping the over 4,000 people displaced.
(Reuters/BBC/AP) – Hundreds of people have been killed and more than 2,000 are missing after a landslide smashed into a village in a mountainous area of north Afghanistan on Friday, and rescue teams were struggling to reach the remote area.
Villagers dug with their bare hands to try to find survivors under the mountain of mud, but officials said there was little hope of finding anyone alive given the scale of the disaster.
Triggered by heavy rain, the side of a mountain collapsed into the village in Argo district at around 11 a.m. (2.30 a.m. ET) as people were trying to recover their belongings and livestock after a smaller landslip hit their homes a few hours earlier.
“There were more than 1,000 families living in that village. A total of 2,100 people – men, women and children – are trapped,” Naweed Forotan, a spokesman for the Badakhshan provincial governor, told Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/02/us-afghanistan-landslide-idUSBREA410MP20140502
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27261783
PRESS STATEMENT: the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan on landslides in Badakhshan Province
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/2/afghanistan-landslidedeaths.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140502-afghanistan-landslide-deaths-united-nations/
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