KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Three children drowned on Friday while swimming in the Kabul River in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, local Taliban authorities said, as drowning cases surge across Afghanistan during the hot summer months.
Sayed Tayyab Hamad, spokesperson for the Taliban police command in Nangarhar, identified the victims as two brothers and their cousin. The children were swimming near the Behsoud bridge in the city’s first district when the incident occurred on Friday afternoon.
According to Hamad, the children had gone to the river with friends for recreation. Rescue efforts are underway, but the bodies have not yet been recovered.
Hamad called on residents of Nangarhar to avoid swimming in deep or fast-moving water to prevent similar incidents.
The incident is the latest in a surge of drownings reported across the country in recent months. Dozens of people, many of them children and teenagers, have died in rivers, reservoirs, and irrigation ponds as temperatures rise and families seek relief from the summer heat.
Just two days earlier, a 16-year-old boy drowned while swimming in a river in the Parian district of Panjshir province. Two weeks ago, two children lost their lives in southern Helmand province, while a man drowned in western Farah province.
Officials and local residents attribute many of the fatalities to limited public awareness of water safety and the near-absence of swimming education or emergency rescue services, particularly in remote districts.
