TENS of thousands of children remain affected by ongoing flash floods in Afghanistan, United Nations children’s agency Unicef said today.

Unusually heavy seasonal rains have been wreaking havoc on multiple parts of the country, particularly the north and west, killing hundreds of people and destroying property and crops.

The World Food Programme (WFP), another UN agency, has warned that many survivors are unable to make a living.

Unicef said the extreme weather had all of the hallmarks of the intensifying climate crisis, with some of the affected areas having experienced drought last year.

The WFP said that exceptionally heavy rains  had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses and livelihoods in May, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan. 

Unicef said in a statement that tens of thousands of children remain affected by ongoing floods.

Dr Tajudeen Oyewale, the Unicef representative in Afghanistan, said: “The international community must redouble efforts and investments to support communities to alleviate and adapt to the impact of climate change on children.”

At the same time, “Unicef and the humanitarian community must prepare ourselves for a new reality of climate-related disasters,” he warned.

Afghanistan ranks 15th out of 163 nations in the Children’s Climate Risk Index. This means that not only are climate and environmental shocks and stresses prominent in the country but children are particularly vulnerable to their effects, compared with elsewhere in the world.

Last week, humanitarian charity Save the Children said about 6.5 million children in Afghanistan were forecast to experience crisis levels of hunger in 2024.

Nearly three in 10 Afghan children will face crisis or emergency levels of hunger this year as their country feels the immediate impact of floods, the long-term effects of drought and the return of Afghans from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, a Save the Children report said.