HERAT: Twenty-nine people died in two provinces in Afghanistan due to hail and heavy rain, officials said on Tuesday.

“Twenty-one people were killed and six others were injured” because of hail in western Farah province, said Mohammad Israel Sayar, head of the province’s Disaster Management Department. The victims are members of two families who had gone for a picnic, he said.

In southern Kandahar, the local disaster management department said in a statement that eight people — including women and children — were killed in several locations due to heavy rain.

“Today, four women who were busy washing clothes were swept away by floodwaters... and only one woman survived,” the statement said.

It added that a child drowned in Kandahar while a roof collapsed on a family killing one woman and three children. Among the poorest countries in the world after decades of war, Afghanistan is particularly exposed to the effects of climate change, which scientists say is spurring extreme weather.

It is ranked as the country sixth most vulnerable to climate change. Drought, floods, land degradation and declining agricultural productivity are key threats, the UN development agency’s representative in Afghanistan, Stephen Rodriques, said in 2023.

Flash floods in May last year killed hundreds and swamped swaths of agricultural land in Afghanistan, where 80 per cent of people depend on farming to survive.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2025