Landslide kills hundreds in Afghanistan, thousands missing

  • 10 years ago
ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)

Hundreds of people have been killed and more than 2,000 are missing after a landslide smashed into a village in a mountainous area of north Afghanistan on Friday (May 2), and rescue teams were struggling to reach the remote area.

Villagers dug with their bare hands to try to find survivors under the mountain of mud, but officials said there was little hope of finding anyone alive given the scale of the disaster.

Triggered by heavy rain, the side of a mountain collapsed into the village in Argo district at around 11 a.m. (0630 GMT) as people were trying to recover their belongings and livestock after a smaller landslip hit their homes a few hours earlier.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) put the number of fatalities at 350.

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