Afghanistan massive landslide buries community

An Afghanistan community now lies under 60 meters of mud after a massive landslide engulfed a remote northeastern province on Friday, burying 300 homes and taking the lives of at least 2,700 people.

‘The scale of this landslide is absolutely devastating, with an entire village practically wiped away. Hundreds of families have lost everything and are in immense need of assistance,’ said Richard Danziger, the chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Afghanistan.

A mass of rock and mud came rushing down a hill, swallowing the Abi Barak village completely. To make matters worse, the landslide came in two waves. The first buried homes and villagers. The second wave buried people from a neighboring village who rushed to rescue and help anyone they could.

The death toll of this disastrous weekend rises to 2,700 while other 14,000 are affected by this natural catastrophe.

Authorities gave up, in the course of this weekend, on trying to find anyone alive. They had sealed up the area and declared it a mass graveyard.

Sunday has been declared a national day of mourning in the memory of the landslide victims.

Other natural disasters ensued in Afghanistan, killing in one week, more people than in the whole year that had passed.

Flash floods killed over 160 people, left 15,000 without homes and affected other 50,000. 'There have now been more Afghans killed through natural disasters in the past seven days than all of 2013,’ said Mark Bowden, U.N. Humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan.