PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan — In an endless sea of white, Afghan villagers waited on rooftops Friday, waving in desperation as helicopters swooped low over the avalanche-struck region. All around them, homes, people and livestock had vanished under the snow. ADVERTISING
PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan — In an endless sea of white, Afghan villagers waited on rooftops Friday, waving in desperation as helicopters swooped low over the avalanche-struck region. All around them, homes, people and livestock had vanished under the snow.
The avalanche in this impoverished corner of Afghanistan killed at least 168 people this week, with dozens succumbing to plummeting temperatures elsewhere. The depth of despair was captured by an Associated Press team traveling on one of the first aid flights to the area.
Army helicopters dropped bags filled with bread — the first food to reach hundreds of people in the far northern district of Paryan in Panjshir province, 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of the capital, Kabul.
As the helicopters touched down, whipping up clouds of powdered snow, men rushed forward for food, water and blankets while women watched from rooftops. Yellow plastic jerry cans of cooking oil, sacks of rice and rolled up blankets were passed from man to man.
On the return flights, the choppers took the injured to an international hospital in the southern reaches of the valley.
President Ashraf Ghani and his chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, met with bereaved families in Panjshir. Ghani called for bulldozers to be sent to the region to clear roads and start digging people out. The Cabinet held an emergency meeting on the disaster in Panjshir to try to avoid the panic that followed a similar tragedy last year.
The number of dead was expected to climb with cold weather and difficult conditions hampering rescue efforts. UNOCHA said hundreds were still missing in affected provinces.
Mohammad Aslam Syas, deputy chief of the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said the helicopter drops were the only way to distribute supplies to people in Panjshir, which was still unreachable by road. He said 168 people were known to have died in the province’s northern Panjshir Valley.
Acting Gov. Abdul Rahman Kabiri said Ghani had inspected the damage to the northern reaches of the valley Friday and demanded machinery be sent in to clear roads.
The Salang Tunnel, which links Kabul to northern Afghanistan, has been closed for four days, and power supplies to the capital and neighboring provinces were curtailed severely. Officials said they were working on clearing the tunnel after avalanches at both ends.
The government declared a three-day mourning period, starting Saturday, for the dead.
Among recent major natural disasters in Afghanistan was a massive landslide in May that killed hundreds — with some estimates that 2,700 died, although there has never been a definitive count.
Another landslide in 2012 killed 71 people. Authorities were not able to recover most of the bodies and ended up declaring the site a mass grave.
