Flooding in northern Afghanistan kills at least 37

KABUL: Afghan and UN authorities say flash flooding in northern Afghanistan has killed at least 37 people.
More than 100 homes, hundreds of hectares of farmland and dozens of cattle and other animals have been destroyed by the floods that followed four or five days of heavy rain in the region.
Abdul Hai Khateby, who is the spokesman in Ghor province, said yesterday that 24 people have been killed in four districts, including the provincial capital of Chaghcharan.
The provincial spokesman of Badakhshan, Abdul Marouf Rasekh, says 13 people were killed Friday night in Yaftal district and four other districts have been affected.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says many of the unpaved, gutted roads in the area have been severely flooded, making aid distribution difficult.

Blast at Afghan music market
Meanwhile, an improvised bomb exploded at a music market in an Afghan city yesterday, leaving two people dead, officials said, a day after Taleban militants stormed a lakeside resort near Kabul, killing at least 18.
The blast at the market in the eastern city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan’s militant-infested tribal areas, wounded four people, local government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said.
Two of the casualties later died from their injuries, Sayed Afandi Sayedi, a senior doctor at the local hospital, said.
Under the hard-line rule of the Taleban, overthrown by a US-led invasion in 2001, music was regarded as un-Islamic and banned, and Afghan music shop owners particularly in Jalalabad, have recently complained of being threatened by extremists.
Yesterday’s blast and Friday’s bloody 12-hour siege at a hotel popular with families will add to fears that the Taleban are seeking to re-impose their extreme moral code as the departure of foreign forces approaches.
The 130,000 NATO troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and there are fears that their exit will lead to a reduction in rights and freedoms in the war-torn country.