Avalanche Buries Afghan Village

Rescue workers are today plowing through an avalanche of heavy snow that destroyed a tiny Afghanistan village Sunday night, reports the AP. Snow buried Dasty, a 200-strong village in northeastern Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, and 37 casualties have been confirmed thus far—a number that officials expect to rise as rescuers trickle into the remote region. "It is a mountainous area with so much snow," says Badakhshan's deputy governor. "My concern is that many more people were killed."

Initial reports said that only three women and a child, who were not in Dasty at the time, were the sole survivors. The mountainous northeastern region is wracked by avalanches frequently, including one in 2010 that killed 170. (More Afghanistan stories.)