Parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan yesterday struggled to dig out from heavy snow, with dozens of people reported killed and some major highways closed.
Heavy snow also blanketed the Afghan capital of Kabul, where the government closed its offices.
In northern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province, over the past two days as many as 19 people were killed and 17 injured by avalanches, collapsed roofs and road accidents, said Naweed Frotan, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
Photo: Reuters
The provincial government was working to reach at least 12 districts in Badakhshan that had been completely cut off, he added.
On the other side of the border, at least nine people, including children, were killed by an avalanche in northern Pakistan’s Chitral district, with as many as 14 residents still trapped in collapsed houses, district official Syed Maghferat Shah said.
“So far the rescue workers have recovered nine bodies and efforts are under way to retrieve more,” he said.
The avalanche struck a small village of 25 houses about 3am, but evacuation operations were delayed by the weather, Chitral Deputy Commissioner Shahab Hameed Yousafzai said.
In a separate incident in the Chitral region, a government rescue worker was killed when an avalanche struck a check post near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the commanding officer said.
“There is no way to rush the injured persons to Chitral hospital because all roads in the valley have been blocked due to heavy snowfall,” the officer said.
The snow wreaked havoc on major roads in Afghanistan, including the Kabul-Kandahar Highway, where police and soldiers had to rescue about 250 cars and buses trapped by the storm, said Jawid Salangi, a spokesman for Ghazni Province, where as much as 2m of new snow was reported.
“Some people were carried to local residents’ houses and some to military and police checkpoints,” he said, adding that officials expected the road to reopen quickly.
“Fortunately we arrived on time and there is not a single causality,” he said.
The Salang pass north of Kabul was also closed under as much as 2.5m of snow, according to police General Rajab Salangi, who oversees the area.
“It will remain blocked until the snow is cleared from the main road, facilities are provided and it is safe to travel,” he said.
Additional reporting by AFP
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema