KABUL: Survivors of the deadly flash floods that ripped through northern Afghanistan were still struggling without basic aid on Sunday, as the official death toll rose to over 300.

Heavy rains on Friday triggered flash floods across at least seven provinces, including Baghlan, Ghor, Badakhshan and Takhar, injuring more than 1,600 people and destroyed about 2,600 houses, according to the latest data from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees.

Many people remain missing and livestock were wiped out as survivors picked through muddy, debris-littered streets and damaged buildings over the weekend, while authorities and humanitarian agencies deployed aid and rescue workers.

“All available resources are being mobilized, and relevant ministries and agencies are actively engaged in delivering urgent aid,” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, Afghanistan’s deputy minister for economic affairs, told survivors in Baghlan province on Sunday, as he reassured “unwavering support” from the Taliban-led government “until their lives are restored to normalcy.”

But some people in the province, which bore the brunt of the deluges, said that aid has yet to reach them.

“We haven’t received any support from the government or aid organizations yet. Everyone comes and asks us questions, then they go back,” Ghulam Nabi, who is from the province’s Burka district, told Arab News in a phone interview.

“We lost our houses and our lives. Everything we had is under mud now. The agriculture land and livestock, our only source of livelihood, are also completely destroyed. We don’t have the basic means to cook food for ourselves.”

Since mid-April, flash flooding and other floods had left scores of people dead and destroyed farmlands across Afghanistan, a country where 80 percent of its more than 41 million people depend on agriculture to survive.

The South Asian nation is prone to natural disasters and is considered by the UN to be one of countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Aid group Save the Children said about 600,000 people, half of them children, live in the five districts in Baghlan that have been severely impacted by the recent floods.

“Lives and livelihoods have been washed away. The flash floods tore through villages, sweeping away homes and killing livestock. Children have lost everything,” Arshad Malik, the group’s country director in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

Most of the affected areas are still cut off on Sunday, inaccessible by trucks as roads and bridges were damaged by the floods, which also impacted other public infrastructure.

People were struggling to access essential health services, the World Health Organization said in a statement, as “several health facilities remain non-operational.”

Abdul Fatah Jawad, director of Ehsas Welfare and Social Services Organization, said that many of the flood survivors were still in shock.

“People are so scared and traumatized. Most houses that survived the flooding are emptied as people fear more floods. Families took refuge in school yards and deserted areas far from residential houses,” Jawad told Arab News.

He said families are in urgent need of basic goods, such as food, drinking water, medicine, tents, blankets and shelter. Since Saturday, his organization has managed to deliver cooked food for hundreds of families.

“People, particularly children, need to eat something … They also need cash to rebuild their houses and their businesses,” he said. “Some families lost everything — house, land, livestock, business. They are completely helpless.”

SYDNEY: A former US Marine pilot fighting extradition from Australia on US charges of training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers, unknowingly worked with a Chinese hacker, his lawyer said.
Daniel Duggan, 55, a naturalized Australian citizen, feared requests by Western intelligence agencies for sensitive information were putting his family at risk, the lawyer said in a legal filing seen by Reuters.
The lawyer’s filing supports Reuters reporting linking Duggan to convicted Chinese defense hacker Su Bin.
Duggan denies the allegations that he broke US arms control laws. He has been in an Australian maximum security prison since his 2022 arrest after returning from six years working in Beijing.
US authorities found correspondence with Duggan on electronic devices seized from Su Bin, Duggan’s lawyer Bernard Collaery said in the March submission to Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, who will decide whether to surrender Duggan to the US after a magistrate hears Duggan’s extradition case.
The case will be heard in a Sydney court this month, two years after his arrest in rural Australia at a time when Britain was warning its former military pilots not to work for China.
Su Bin, arrested in Canada in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2016 to theft of US military aircraft designs by hacking major US defense contractors. He is listed among seven co-conspirators with Duggan in the extradition request.
Duggan knew Su Bin as an employment broker for Chinese state aviation company AVIC, lawyer Collaery wrote, and the hacking case was “totally unrelated to our client.”
Although Su Bin “may have had improper connection to (Chinese) agents this was unknown to our client,” Duggan’s lawyer wrote.
‘OVERT INTELLIGENCE CONTACT’
AVIC was blacklisted by the US last year as a Chinese military-linked company.
Messages retrieved from Su Bin’s electronic devices show he paid for Duggan’s travel from Australia to Beijing in May 2012, according to extradition documents lodged by the United States with the Australian court.
Duggan asked Su Bin to help source Chinese aircraft parts for his Top Gun tourist flight business in Australia, Collaery wrote.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and US Navy criminal investigators knew Duggan was training pilots for AVIC and met him in Australia’s Tasmania state in December 2012 and February 2013, his lawyer wrote.
ASIO and the US Navy Criminal Investigation Service did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the meetings. ASIO has previously said it would not comment as the matter was before the court.
“An ASIO officer suggested that while carrying on his legitimate business operations in China, Mr.Duggan may be able to gather sensitive information,” his lawyer wrote.
Duggan moved to China in 2013 and was barred from leaving the country in 2014, his lawyer said. Duggan’s LinkedIn profile and aviation sources who knew him said he was working in China as an aviation consultant in 2013 and 2014.
He renounced his US citizenship in 2016 at the US embassy in Beijing, backdated to 2012 on a certificate, after “overt intelligence contact by US authorities that may have compromised his family safety,” his lawyer wrote.
His lawyers oppose extradition, arguing there is no evidence the Chinese pilots he trained were military and that he became an Australian citizen in January 2012, before the alleged offenses.
The United States government has argued Duggan did not lose his US citizenship until 2016.