Heavy snow and rainfall kill 61, injure 110 over 3 days in Afghanistan, authorities say

Snow covers the streets of the town of Ghazni , southwest from Kabul, Sunday, Jan. 24, 2025. Heavy snow and rainfall over the past three days have killed and injured scores of people across Afghanistan, the country's disaster management authority said Saturday.(AP Photo/Mohammad Amin)

KABUL, Afghanistan — Heavy snow and rainfall over the past three days have killed more than 60 people and injured over 100 across Afghanistan, the country’s disaster management authority said Saturday, as authorities in the impoverished country struggled to open roads and gain access to cut-off villages.

National Disaster Management Authority spokesman Yousaf Hammad said 61 people had died and 110 were injured, while 458 homes had been completely or partially destroyed and hundreds of animals had died in 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. The numbers, he said, could change as authorities gathered more information from the provinces.

Afghanistan is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, with snow and heavy rain that triggers flash floods often killing dozens, or even hundreds, of people at a time. In 2024, more than 300 people died in springtime flash floods.

Decades of conflict coupled with poor infrastructure, a struggling economy, deforestation and the intensifying effects of climate change have amplified the impact of such disasters, particularly in remote areas where many homes are built of mud and offer limited protection against sudden deluges or heavy snowfall.

The country’s eastern provinces are also still struggling to recover from devastating earthquakes that struck last year, in late August and again in November, destroying villages and killing more than 2,200 people.

Those displaced by the quakes are particularly vulnerable to the extreme cold and bad weather conditions. In December, UNICEF said an estimated 270,000 children in the areas affected by the quakes were at “severe risk of life-threatening diseases related to the cold.”

Earlier this month, the United Nations said Afghanistan would “remain one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises in 2026.” The UN and its humanitarian partners launched a US$1.7 billion appeal to assist nearly 18 million people in urgent need in the country.

Abdul Qahar Afghan, The Associated Press