GUZIRGA I-NUR, Afghanistan — More than 80 bodies have been found after a devastating flash flood in Afghanistan’s mountainous and remote north, a provincial official said Sunday, as police and villagers scoured the rugged terrain for missing people.
Lieutenant Fazel Rahman, the police chief in the Guzirga i-Nur district of Baghlan province, said the death toll from Friday’s flash flooding had climbed to 81 from 54.
The flood destroyed some 850 houses across several villages and damaged more than 1,000, leaving thousands of people in need of food, shelter, water, and medicine, Rahman said.
Local resident Sahib Nazar openly wept while recounting his own family’s losses.
‘‘I have lost everything, my parents, my wife and five children,’’ he said. “I have buried my mother, wife and three of my children, but still looking for my father and two other children’s bodies.’’
Nazar, a local police officer, said he received a phone call late Friday afternoon about the heavy rain and flooding.
He said he left his sick son at a hospital and tried to come home but couldn’t as all roads were destroyed.