Flooding hits town in drought-hit region in Iran

A provincial official for Qasr-e Qand Town said on Saturday that flooding caused by rainfall from the annual monsoon and the overflowing of Kajou River had cut off access to more than 38 nearby villages.

Ahmad-Reza Hashemzehi said over 6,000 people lived in those villages, and that rescue operations could only take place aerially.

He said that due to the flooding, locals on the ground had to move with heavy-equipment machines such as tractor-mounted loaders.

Sistan-and-Baluchestan Province, in southeastern Iran, faces a severe drought, affecting the lives of locals and sparking a national debate.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has been refusing to allow Iran’s share of water from Helmand River to stream into the country, hence the drought.

Iran’s Space Agency said recently that images obtained from Iranian satellites showed that the Taliban were preventing water from reaching the Iranian side of the border by building numerous dams and diverting the flow of the water.