A mother and her six children were killed when a two-storey house collapsed in the eastern province of Nangarhar, the Taliban police command said in a statement on Thursday.
The incident occurred around midnight in the Quchko area of Jalalabad, the provincial capital, according to the statement. The children’s father was injured and is receiving treatment in hospital, the statement said, adding that his condition was stable.
The house was located near a river and had previously been damaged by water flow, the statement said. All eight family members were trapped under the rubble when the building collapsed, with only the father surviving.
The incident comes amid severe winter weather across Afghanistan, where heavy snowfall, rain and storms over recent days have caused widespread damage and loss of life.
Earlier, the Taliban-run disaster management authority said at least 61 people had been killed and 110 injured by recent snowfall and heavy rain in 15 provinces, including Kabul, Parwan, Panjshir, Bamiyan, Daykundi, Maidan Wardak, Ghazni, Herat, Ghor, Badghis, Faryab, Sar-e Pol, Balkh, Samangan and Nuristan.
The authority said 458 houses had been fully or partially destroyed, 360 families affected and hundreds of livestock killed by the extreme weather.
Afghanistan is highly vulnerable to natural disasters, and severe winter conditions regularly cause casualties and damage, particularly in rural and mountainous areas where housing is often poorly constructed and emergency services are limited.
