Three people of a group of seven drowned after the boat capsized yesterday in the Panj River, according to the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) local government. Four others were successfully rescued.
Ms. Niloufar Aslamsohoyva, a spokeswoman for GBAO governor, says the boat belonged to FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance and it was used for mitigation of effects of July 8 mudflows that blocked the river, forming a lake.
The accident took place near the village of Shirgovad in GBAO’s Darvoz district. One of those drowned is employee of the Tajik emergency management agency, the other one is police officer and the third one is local resident.
The mudflows that occurred on the Afghan bank of the Panj River on July 8 damaged dozens of houses on both sides of the Tajik-Afghan border and blocked the section of the Dushanbe-Khorog highway between the villages of Shirgovad and Yoged.
The mudflows carrying the mass of slurry with them reportedly blocked the river, forming a lake. The river burst the banks, flooding the Khostav village in GBAO’s Darvoz district.
Twenty-two houses were reportedly damaged by the flooding. No injured was reported. The flooding victims were temporarily housed in tents.
According to Russia’s Central Military District, Russian servicemen on July 13 used more than 100 kilograms of TNT to destroy the mass slurry that blocked the river.
Colonel Yaroslav Roshchupkin, an aide to the commander of Russia's Central Military District, says the Central Military District command has received an appropriate appeal from Tajikistan’s authorities.
The mudflows left several people dead in Afghan Darvaz, according to the press center of Russia’s Military Central District.
Meanwhile, the highway connecting Dushanbe and the GBAO administrative center, Khorog, through Kulob is still closed for traffic, but people can use the highway connecting Dushanbe and Khorog through the Sangvor (formerly Tavildara) district and the Khoburabot Pass. The work on repairing the Dushanbe-Kulob-Darvoz-Khorog highway is under way
The issue of resettlement of disaster-affected families to safer places is still under consideration, according to the GBAO administration.
