(8 Feb 2002)
1. Mountain range
2. On the road leading to Salang tunnel, various of car owners trying to dig out their cars from snow
4. Man warming up his engine with fire underneath car
5. Cars
6. SOUNDBITE: (Farsi) Mohammed Zafar Qaleneary, Survivor
"There were three men in our car, when the situation got bad we escaped to another village called Olan, after one day we came back and I saw the driver he was very sick we carried him to the hospital, but now we want to drive our car to Kabul."
7. Various of men digging out a lorry in a tunnel located near the Salang tunnel
8. Mohammed Rafiq Safiqee and his wife walking through the tunnel close to the Salang
9. SOUNDBITE: (Farsi) Mohammed Rafiq Safiqee, Survivor
"We were for three days Khanjan, we couldn't come this way because the road was very bad. When I heard today the road is ok we came by foot."
10. Overturned car in snow
11. Zoom in to entrance of Salang tunnel
12. Various of rescue workers and cars inside the Salang tunnel
13. Southern entrance to Salang tunnel
STORYLINE:
Using bulldozers and shovels workers dug through snow up to four metres (13 feet) deep on Friday, trying to reopen the tunnel that is the key link between northern and southern Afghanistan two days after an avalanche closed the passage and killed five people.
Locals on the road to the Salang tunnel tried to dig out their vehicles with shovels and bare hands and some lit small fires underneath their cars to warm them up.
About a dozen vehicles lay along the entrance to the Salang Tunnel, which goes through the Hindu Kush mountains about 130 kilometres (80 miles) north of Kabul.
International teams led by The HALO Trust, a British-based demining group that had bulldozers in the area, rescued some 500 people from the snow on Thursday, including hundreds who were trapped in vehicles for more than a day in temperatures that fell to minus 40 degrees.
By Thursday night, all those trapped by the avalanche were freed.
The three-kilometre (two-mile) tunnel, damaged during Afghanistan's wars, was reopened in January after Russian-led repair works.
It's a major route for aid shipments between northern and southern Afghanistan.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
