Avalanche kills family of 12 in central Afghanistan available

Feb 11, 2010, 12:34 GMT

Kabul - An avalanche hit a house in central Afghanistan, killing 12 members of a family, a provincial governor said Thursday, while rescue teams still searched for bodies following a series of avalanches in the north of the country.

The avalanche buried the house in Bamyan province's Panjab district on Wednesday, Habiba Surabi, the provincial governor, told German Press Agency dpa.

'Four men, three women and five children were killed in the incident,' she said, adding that local volunteers pulled out two people alive from the snowed-covered house.

She said another civilian and a policewoman had also been killed in two separate avalanches in the province in the past week.

The latest deaths came after a series of more than two dozen avalanches hit a mountain pass in northern Afghanistan on Monday. Some 169 people were killed by the snow, making it one of the worst natural disasters in the country's recent history.

At least 30 avalanches struck the Salang Pass, a mountainous area at an altitude of 3,300 metres where a 5-kilometre tunnel links the capital Kabul to the northern parts of the country.

More than 135 people were injured and more than 2,600 rescued by Afghan and NATO rescue teams.

Hundreds of Afghan police, army and local residents were still digging for bodies with shovels, bulldozers and other equipment.

Three more bodies were found on Thursday, taking the total number of deaths to 169, Amena Hashimi, a medical doctor in Salang, said.

Officials in the area said that they feared the death toll could rise even further, as nearly 1 kilometre of road was still covered under a thick blanket of snow.

Hashimi said dozens of snow-clearing vehicles were still working to reopen the road for traffic, warning that 'more vehicles with bodies could still be trapped.'

Interior Ministry spokesman Zamarai Bashary said Wednesday evening that the rescue operation was '95 per cent over.'

Since Monday evening, at least four US Chinook 47 helicopters and two Afghan army choppers ferried rescuers to the site and bodies to hospitals.

Officials said most of the victims were found frozen inside their vehicles, while the bodies of those who had tried to escape from the area on foot, were strewn along the 3.5 kilometres of the road buried by the snow.