KABUL, March 20 - Torrential rains have killed more than 200 people and destroyed thousands of houses in several parts of Afghanistan in recent days, officials said on Sunday.
The worst hit areas were Deh Rawud district in the rugged central Uruzgan province and the western provinces of Farah and Herat, they said.
"The deaths of 115 have been confirmed... while thousands of homes have been destroyed,,"" Uruzgan's governor Jan Mohammad Khan said, adding that many more people were missing.
U.S. military Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters rescued around 250 people in the Deh Rawud District, some 70 kilometres northeast of the U.S. at Kandahar, after the Helmand river burst its banks.
In Farah 68 people died as a result of floods, its governor Assadullah Falah said. Officials reported 40 more deaths in Faryab and Ghor provinces.
"We have reports of total destruction of 7,800 houses in Farah," Falah said, adding that large numbers of livestock had been killed.
Some 2,500 houses had collapsed in Herat province. Most houses in Afghanistan are built from mud and are highly vulnerable to flooding.
Local officials also reported an outbreak of dysentry diarrhoea in Herat's mountainous and inaccessible Pashtun Zarghoon area.
Afghanistan had its worst winter for over a decade after nearly six years of harsh drought.
Several hundred people lost their lives during the winter and the current rains coupled with melting snow have caused the latest calamity.
