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Afghan army helicopters descended on the remote village in the north of Badakhshan province to try rescue families, the latest victims to Afghanistan's worse winter in 30 years.
"The way to the village is closed, it is covered in snow," provincial governor spokesman Abdul Marof Rasikh said of the village of around 300 people, located in the Shikai district.
Afghan army helicopters descended on the north of Badakhshan to try to rescue the trapped families, Al Jazeera reported.
Six people injured in the snow were evacuated to neighboring Tajikistan for emergency medical treatment, according to the network.
Nasir Hemat, director of the Red Crescent in Badakhsham, told the BBC rescue teams had also reached the remote site.
"Our rescue work is going on," Hemat told the network. "We are hoping we can rescue a lot of people and prevent a human catastrophe."
Though avalanches are fairly common in the mountainous north, Tuesday's deaths were seen as particularly painful for a country that has experienced its worse winter in decades, killing dozens in the capital Kabul and creating further food shortages in one of the world's poorest countries.
Before Tuesday, freezing cold and avalanches had claimed the lives of 60 people -- including 35 children -- in Badakhshan province this winter, officials said.
According to the BBC, Badakhshan is one of the country's poorest and most remote regions and is shut off by heavy snow every year.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Sadly, my first thought when reading the headline was "I don't care." It's hard to give a damn about a country that supports religious zealots, suppresses women's rights, and freaks out over burnt books and comics. The poor people in this village have probably never hurt anyone in their lives, and yet that knowledge isn't enough to change my apathy.
2014 seems way too far off.
What is sad is that these "religious zealots", etc, etc have succeeded in turning you (and me at times) into someone who has no sympathy for , in your own words, "poor people who have probably never hurt anyone in their lives" If you(and I) have lost the ability to feel at least a little sorry for innocent humans suffering a disaster, then I am twice as angry at the extremists than I was before.
And yes, 2014 does seem too far off, let's get out of there already!!
Need more of them, then maybe we can get out!
Maybe the president of Afghanistan should demand an apology from god!!!
AG99 i couldn't agree more. As far as i'm concerned, too freaking bad. At this point I hope we don't even offer aid. Let someone that actually likes the afghaniis lend a hand. Though they may be waiting awhile.
Condolences and prayers go the victims' families and friends.
Must be the US playing with its new 'avalanche ray', either that or all those scantily clad women running around Afghanistan, according to Hamid Karzai and his drug-running government. It seems the Afghans are making side money using US supplied cargo planes to ferry guns, drugs, livestock and ammunition to various parts of Afghanistan ON THE US CHARGE ACCOUNT! We need to get out, pull all our equipment with us and let these sand monkeys survive on their own! We are just facilitating the forces we are fighting against, while Karzai gets richer on the opium trade!