KABUL — Afghanistan feared the death toll from one of the country's worst natural disasters could rise Thursday, as rescue workers used everything from bare hands to bulldozers to dig for bodies buried in snow.
The bodies of at least 166 people killed when avalanches hit a treacherous mountain highway in northern Afghanistan this week have been recovered, said interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary.
But scores of vehicles remain buried beneath massive snow floes and could contain more bodies, he said.
"The latest information we have is that 166 people were killed and 125 others have been rescued and taken to hospital," he told AFP.
"We're not clear yet on how many cars are still under the snow, but police have been working on recovery since yesterday and are hoping to bring the operation to an end soon," he said.
A heavy blizzard struck the busy northern Salang Pass, connecting the capital Kabul with the north of the country through the Hindu Kush mountain range, on Monday in one of the country's worst such disasters.
Massive walls of snow crashed onto the highway, burying dozens of vehicles and pushing many into the steep and rocky valley below.
Officials said at least 36 avalanches took place late Monday and on Tuesday, of which three caused most of the casualties.
Much of northern Afghanistan is relatively sheltered from the eight-year Taliban insurgency that 113,000 NATO and US forces are trying to quell.
Bashary said rescue work was "90-95 percent" complete, with around one kilometre of the 3.5-kilometre (two-mile) pass yet to be cleared.
The health ministry has stationed 42 ambulances, staffed by doctors and nurses, at the tunnel entrances to aid the injured as they are brought out, spokesman Ahmad Farid Raaid said.
He put the number of injured at 130.
"There is fear there will be more dead bodies in the vehicles that are being pulled out of the snow," he said.
An army battalion backed up by heavy machinery and other excavating equipment had been deployed to the pass for rescue and recovery work, a senior defence ministry official said.
Up to 16,000 vehicles traverse the Salang pass, located about 3,400 metres (11,000 feet) above sea level, every day.
The only major route linking the country's north and south, it was built with Soviet help in the 1950s to bypass central Bamiyan province through the Hindu Kush range.
The pass provides the shortest route linking the two ends of the mountainous country and as one of the highest mountain highways in the world was hailed as an engineering feat upon its completion.
Soldiers of the Afghan army were flown by helicopters to the site on Wednesday, and with the help of local villagers frantically dug through the snow to try to find survivors who had been buried alive in the snow.
The avalanches dumped such huge quantities of snow with such ferocity that windows of cars and buses smashed as they tumbled into the valley below.
Many of the dead were killed as their vehicles plunged down the mountainsides, while others perished in the freezing conditions.
Ahmad Shah Waheed, deputy public works minister, told reporters on Wednesday that 1,600 people had been rescued but hundreds of vehicles remained trapped in the rugged pass where heavy snow storms blocked the traffic.
Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar has fended off questions about why the road was open in the first place, insisting the situation appeared manageable until the storm struck abruptly.
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