Rescuers give up hope in Afghanistan landslide; 2,100 believed dead

Afghan officials gave up hope on Saturday of finding any survivors from a landslide in the country’s remote northeast, putting the death toll at more than 2,100 people, as rescuers turned their attention to helping the roughly 4,000 others left displaced.

Despite the significant number of missing persons, officials say without modern equipment, their search is near hopeless.

Officials also expressed concern that the unstable hillside above the site of the disaster may cave in again, threatening the homeless as well as the U.N. and local rescue teams that have arrived in Badakhshan province, which borders Tajikistan.

"More than 2,100 people from 300 families are all dead," Naweed Forotan, a spokesman for the Badakhshan provincial governor, told Reuters.

Villagers and a few dozen police, equipped with only basic digging tools, resumed their search when daylight broke, but it soon became clear there was no hope of finding survivors buried in up to 300 feet of mud.

"Seven members of my family were here, four or five of them were killed ... I am also half alive, what can I do?" an elderly woman told Reuters.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan said the focus was now on the more than 4,000 people displaced — either directly as a result of Friday's landslide or as a precautionary measure for villages assessed to be at risk.

The impoverished area, dotted with villages of mud-brick homes nestled in valleys beside bare slopes, has been hit by several landslides in recent years.

The side of the mountain above Ab Barak collapsed at around 11 a.m. on Friday as people were trying to recover belongings and livestock after a smaller landslip hit a few hours earlier.

It is believed the slides were triggered by torrential rain.

Officials worry another section of the mountainside could collapse at any moment.

The Afghan military flew rescue teams to the area Saturday, as the remote mountain region is served by only narrow, poorly constructed roads that have been damaged by more than a week of heavy rain.

The search and rescue effort has been hampered by the lack of modern equipment available to authorities in rural sections of Afghanistan.

"We have managed to get one excavator into the area, but digging looks hopeless," Colonel Abdul Qadeer Sayad, a deputy police chief of Badakhshan, told Reuters.

He said the sheer size of the area affected, and the depth of the mud, meant that only modern machinery could help. NATO-led coalition troops are on standby to assist, but on Saturday said the Afghan government had not asked for help.

"I call on the government to come and help our people, to take the bodies out," said a middle-aged man, standing on a hill overlooking the river of mud where his village once stood.

"We managed to take out only 10 to 15 people, the rest of our villagers here are trapped."

Meanwhile, the thousands of displaced are suffering. Hundreds camped out in freezing conditions. Some, but not all, were given tents. Officials distributed food and water.

Seasonal rains and spring snow melt have caused devastation across large swaths of northern Afghanistan, killing more than 100 people before this latest disaster this year alone.

U.S. President Barack Obama said American forces were on standby to help.

"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.

President Hamid Karzai designated Sunday as a national day of mourning for all of those who died in the disaster.

Al Jazeera and wire services