By DPA
Kabul : More than 24 people were killed in avalanches and cold weather in Afghanistan while heavy snowfalls blocked several roads in the country, leaving hundreds stranded and making food deliveries difficult, officials said.
In Herat province in western Afghanistan, eight members of a family were killed when their mud-brick house collapsed due to heavy snowfalls, said Noor-ul-din Ahmadi, head of Afghan Red Crescent in the province.
Six nomads were killed elsewhere in the province due to cold weather in mountainous area while two others died in an avalanche, Ahmadi said.
Also in the same western region, five people were killed in Farah province, while three others were killed in neighbouring Ghor province when their house was destroyed by an avalanche.
More than 12 people were missing as hundreds of people, including policemen, were stranded in remote areas where access to those villages was cut off, said Ahmadi.
Several Iranian engineers and their police escort were stranded in Ghoryan district of Herat province and were rescued by an Afghan army helicopter, General Zahir Azimi, defence ministry spokesman, told a press conference Wednesday.
Afghanistan’s ministry of public health declared a nation-wide “state of alert,” a spokesman for the ministry said, adding that more than 30,000 health workers have been mobilized.
Due to bad weather and blockage of roads, the poverty-ridden country also faces severe wheat and flour shortages and increases in food and fuel prices.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has delivered tonnes of food items and thousands of warm clothes to needy people throughout the country over the past weeks, alliance spokesman General Carlos Branco told a press conference on Wednesday.
Branco said that humanitarian assistance was not ISAF’s “primary responsibility,” but said that, “We stand ready to assist in our capabilities when we have a formal request” by the Afghan government, he said.