Afghan avalanches claim 216 lives, president calls for dispatching assistance

　　KABUL, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- Chilly weather coupled with heavy snowfall and avalanches have claimed 216 lives including women and children across the mountainous Afghanistan, chief of Natural Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Deam Kakar said Friday.

　　"Our data collected so far confirms the death of 216 people including women and children in the avalanches and snowfall across the country," Kakar told Xinhua.

　　He also added that the vast majority of the victims are in Panjshir province as 182 people have been confirmed dead there in the mountainous province.

　　Former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh who paid an aerial view by chopper in the company of government Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah to the snow blanketed Panjshir province the other day, said that hundreds of houses had been destroyed and the affected people are in urgent need of humanitarian cooperation.

　　Twenty seven people have been injured and hundreds of houses have been destroyed and damaged, due to three days of rain, heavy snowfall and avalanches in parts of Afghanistan, started on Sunday, the NDMA chief stressed.

　　Rescue operations have been going on and humanitarian assistance have been dispatched to the affected areas, Kakar went on to say.

　　The avalanches, besides killing 182 people in Panjshir province have also claimed the lives of 34 more people in other parts of the country, 18 of them in Maimai district of the northern Badakhsan province.

　　"Heavy snowfall and avalanches have killed 18 people and injured 10 others in Maimai district," Abudallah Dehqan, the Badakhshan provincial chief of NDMA told Xinhua.

　　He also added that more than 100 houses had been badly damaged in the district.

　　Meanwhile, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, in addition to expressing sympathy with the affected families and expressing sorrow over the natural disaster, has instructed concerned entities to dispatch humanitarian assistance to the affected areas on emergency basis.