At least 14 people were killed and a dozen injured when avalanches buried their houses in northern Afghanistan, a government spokesman said on Monday. The avalanches occurred Sunday after heavy snowfall in the mountainous province of Badakhshan, the provincial governor's spokesman Abdul Marof Rasikh said. "According to our initial report, 14 people, all men, were killed and 11 others were injured during avalanches and heavy snowfall in Wakhan and Darayem districts of the province," he was quoted as saying by the German Press Agency "DPA". Rasikh said that a joint rescue operation had been launched to save others in the village. "Seventy houses are buried in snow in the village but we don't have any figure for causalities." Heavy snow has been falling since last week on the capital Kabul and the north of country, where such weather is common in the winter.
