At least 350 killed in Afghanistan landslide, hundreds more feared dead

At least 2,000 people are missing and hundreds presumed dead in a landslide in one of the most remote areas of Afghanistan, local officials said after the incident on Friday. More than 300 homes are buried under debris after part of a mountainside collapsed following a week of heavy rain that had caused snow to melt.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) put the number of fatalities at 350 and said significant displacement was expected.

"There were more than 1,000 families living in that village. A total of 2,100 people — men, women and children — are trapped," Naweed Forotan, a spokesman for the governor of the northern Badakhshan province, told Reuters.

"As the part of the mountain which collapsed is so big, we don't believe anyone would survive. The government and locals from surrounding villages are helping with the rescue, and so far they have recovered more than 100 bodies."

At least 100 people were being treated for injuries, according to Col. Abdul Qadeer Sayad, a deputy police chief of Badakhshan province.

Only eight have been rescued in the disaster, which happened on Friday afternoon. Dozens of families have been displaced because of the slide, according to local reports.

Rescuers had already moved in to help people trapped in an earlier landslide when the second slide began.

The slide happened about 1 p.m. on Friday in the village of Hobo Barik in Badakhshan province, nestled in the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges bordering China.

At least 700 additional homes had been evacuated, officials said. Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Ayoub Salangi confirmed the slide and said a rescue team had been dispatched to the area.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in remarks ahead of a news conference at the White House with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, expressed his condolences.

"Just as the United States has stood with the people of Afghanistan through a difficult decade, we stand ready to help our Afghan partners as they respond to this disaster, for even as our war there comes to an end this year, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people will endure," he said.

The governor said rescue crews didn’t have the right equipment, and appealed for shovels.

“It’s physically impossible right now,” Adib said. “We don’t have enough shovels; we need more machinery.”

Al Jazeera and wire services