KHOST, Afghanistan, 20 March 2005 — At least four Afghans have been devoured by wolves driven down from the hills in search of food during the worst winter in a decade, family members said yesterday. Villagers in Naka, a remote settlement in southeastern Paktia province, found little more than remains and bloodied, shredded clothes when they went looking for 27-year-old Sher Gull and Gull Nawaz, 32.
“They had planned to go to another village to participate in a funeral ceremony. We are sure they were killed by wolves,” Sher Gull’s grieving father Haje Baz Khan told AFP from his mud-brick house. Two other people from Sadar Khel village in the mountainous Mosa Khel district of neighboring Khost province were also killed by wolves, locals said.
Akhtar Mohammad, 36, and 40-year-old Shah Mahmood wanted to buy household goods from the small bazaar near to their village but they never made it. Fellow villager Rab Nawaz said they had probably got lost in the snow and were attacked by wolves. “After two days of searching we found the remains of each one in separate places by following their steps in the snow,” added Akhtar’s brother Door. “Wolves are a big problem this winter because the roads are so bad that villagers have to go everywhere on foot, which leaves them vulnerable to attacks by wild animals,” police chief of Paktia, Hayighul Sleman Khael, told AFP.
Meanwhile, severe floods across much of Afghanistan have killed at least 88 people and left hundreds of people homeless as houses were swept away by the raging waters, officials said. The floods triggered by heavy rain hit the south-central province of Uruzgan, Farah and Ghor provinces in the west and Jawzjan in the north on Friday. At least 88 people, most of them children, have been confirmed dead but more are feared killed in remote districts which have been cut off, officials said.
The Interior Ministry said 85 died in the provincial capital of Farah city, 680 kilometers west of Kabul, and a woman and two children were killed in neighboring Ghor province. “At least 21 elders and 64 children were drowned due to floods in Farah city on Friday,” ministry press officer Dad Mohammed Rasa told AFP. The Farah Rod River flows down from the mountains in Ghor through the provincial capital of neighboring Farah province, but Rasa said authorities in Kabul were still unclear exactly where the worst damage was. “We are waiting for detailed updates from the provinces,” he said. In Uruzgan, scores of houses were destroyed in the capital Tarin Kot, in Khas Uruzgan district and in Chori district, said ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal. “Around 600 houses have been destroyed in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province. They are in severe need of food and tents,” Mashal said.
