Rescuers

AT least 250 people have been killed and hundreds more injured after multiple earthquakes struck eastern Afghanistan.

A 6.0 quake, the strongest, struck the the Jalalabad area at around midnight local time, with tremors felt as far as Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, nearly 200 miles away.

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Towns in the province of Kunar, near Jalalabad, were near the epicentre.

The Kunar Disaster Management Authority said in a statement that at least 250 people were killed and 500 others injured in the districts of Nur Gul, Soki, Watpur, Manogi and Chapadare.

Rescuers are working in several districts of the mountainous province where the quake hit.

Officials have said the terrain is making it tricky to reach survivors – and they expect the death toll to rise.

The 6.0 magnitude quake struck at 11:47pm, 17 miles northeast of Jalalabad, according to the US Geological Survey,

Its epicentre was 5 miles below ground.

There was a second earthquake in the same province about 20 minutes later, with a magnitude of 4.5 and a depth of 6.2 miles.

This was later followed by a 5.2 earthquake at the same depth.

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Rescuers are looking for more than 150 people who were still missing on Monday in northwestern Pakistan, which was devastated by landslides and flash floods on Friday.

Torrential rains triggered the flash foods killing at least 344 people and destroying hundreds of homes.

Most of the deaths – 317 – were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where monsoon rains, expected only to intensify in the days ahead, have driven flooding and landslides that collapsed houses.

More than 150 people are missing in Buner, where at least 208 were killed and “10 to 12 entire villages” were partially buried, according to authorities.

“They could be trapped under the rubble of their homes, or swept away by floodwaters,” said Asfandyar Khattak, head of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority.

“Separately, in Shangla district, dozens of people are also reported missing,” Khattak added.

The spokesman for the province’s rescue agency said about 2,000 rescue workers are involved across nine districts, where rain is still hampering efforts.

“The operation to rescue people trapped under debris is ongoing,” said Bilal Ahmad Faizi.

“The chances of those buried under the debris surviving are very slim,” he added.

After days without power, the electricity supply was restored on Sunday afternoon.

Flooded roads hampered the movement of rescue vehicles, as a few villagers worked to cut fallen trees to clear the way after the water receded.

The provincial government has declared the severely affected mountainous districts of Buner, Bajaur, Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, and Battagram as disaster-hit areas.

On Saturday, hundreds gathered for mass funerals, where bodies wrapped in blood-stained white shawls were laid out on the village ground.

Iran said it stood ready to provide “any cooperation and assistance aimed at alleviating the suffering” in neighbouring Pakistan, while Pope Leo XIV addressed the flooding with prayers “for all those who suffer because of this calamity”.

The monsoon season brings South Asia about three-quarters of its annual rainfall – vital for agriculture and food provision – but also brings destruction.

“The intensity of this year’s monsoon is about 50 to 60 percent more than last year,” said Lieutenant General Inam Haider, chairman of the national disaster agency.

“Two to three more monsoon spells are expected until the first weeks of September,” he told journalists in Islamabad.

Landslides and flash floods are common during the season, which usually begins in June and eases by the end of September.

The torrential rains that have pounded Pakistan since the start of the summer monsoon have killed more than 650 people, with more than 920 injured.

Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, and is contending with extreme weather events with increasing frequency.

Authorities in US state face questions about whether they issued proper warnings in advance of rain-fuelled flooding.

Rescuers in the US state of Texas are scrambling to locate more than two dozen children still missing from a Christian summer camp after a powerful storm caused flash floods that authorities say have killed at least 27 people.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters on Saturday that the death toll included nine children.

Leitha said around 800 people had been evacuated from the region, about 137km (85 miles) northwest of San Antonio, as flood waters receded on Saturday morning.

Torrential downpour on Friday caused the fast-flowing Guadalupe River to rise nearly nine metres (29 feet) near the Camp Mystic summer camp, where around 750 children were staying.

Twenty-seven attendees were still unaccounted for, according to Dalton Rice, city manager of the nearby town of Kerrville in Kerr County.

The Heart O’ The Hills summer camp, located about 1.6km (1 mile) from Camp Mystic, confirmed on Saturday that its director, Jane Ragsdale, was among the dead.

While the National Weather Service (NWS) said the flash-flood emergency had largely ended for Kerr County – the epicentre of the flooding – it warned of more heavy rain to come, maintaining its flood watch until 7pm local time (00:00 GMT on Sunday).

Rice said that more than 1,000 rescuers were on the ground to help with search-and-rescue efforts. Helicopters and drones were being used, with some people being plucked from trees. US Coast Guard helicopters had flown in to assist.

“They are looking in every possible location,” said Rice, adding that search crews were facing harsh conditions while scouring waterlogged rivers, culverts and rocks.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro said that rescue workers had promised to “not give up until the very last person is found – either alive or their body is recovered”.

“That might be a tall order given just how catastrophic these floods were. We’re talking about a region that is dotted with hills and with canyons,” she said.

She added that children in the camps had been particularly vulnerable to the floodwaters, “which rose by eight metres [26 feet] in less than an hour, overnight as they slept”.

Authorities under scutiny

The flooding in the middle of the night on the Fourth of July holiday weekend caught many residents, campers and officials by surprise.

Authorities have come under increasing scrutiny over whether they issued proper warnings and whether enough preparations were made.

State emergency management officials had warned as late as Thursday that west and central Texas faced heavy rains and flash flood threats “over the next couple days”, citing NWS forecasts ahead of the holiday weekend.

The weather forecasts, however, “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw”, W Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said during a news conference on Friday night.

“A lot of questions are being asked about why there weren’t earlier evacuations,” said Al Jazeera’s Zhou-Castro. “They knew there might be rain, they just didn’t know where it would hit, and when it did, it indeed was catastrophic.”

On Saturday morning, US President Donald Trump said the federal government was working with state and local officials to respond to the flooding.

“Our Brave First Responders are on site doing what they do best,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem would soon be on the ground.

The weekend disaster echoes a catastrophic flood almost 40 years ago along the Guadalupe River, where a bus and a van leaving a church camp encountered floodwaters and 10 teenagers drowned trying to escape, according to a NWS summary of the 1987 storm.