Flooding in northern Afghanistan kills at least 37

KABUL, Afghanistan – Flash floods have swept northern Afghanistan, killing at least 37 people, Afghan and U.N. authorities said Saturday.

More than 100 homes, hundreds of hectares (acres) of farmland and farm animals were 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 Saturday that 24 people have been killed in four districts, including the provincial capital of Chaghcharan.

"Many, many houses have been destroyed, and there are reports of lots of cattle and other animals being killed," Khateby said. "It is cloudy and we expect more rain."

The provincial spokesman of Badakhshan, Abdul Marouf Rasekh, said 13 people were killed Friday night in Yaftal district and four other districts have been affected.

The Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority said an estimated 135 houses in Badakhshan had been destroyed, forcing residents to flee.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said many of the unpaved, rutted roads in the area have been severely flooded, making aid distribution difficult.

Elsewhere, a bomb exploded at a music store on Saturday in Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar in the east.

Provincial spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai said the shopkeeper and one of his customers were killed in the blast and two other people were wounded.