In this picture taken on January 18, 2012, Afghan rescue workers walk in a line into a snowbound village in the mountainous northeastern Afghanistan province of Badakhshan. Heavy snow has again cut off 12 districts in the Badakhshan province from its capital city, Faizabad.

(STR/AFP/Getty Images)

At a Glance

Dozens of people were looking for gold in a riverbed. A flash flood and landslide caught the villagers unaware.An official says the toll could rise.

A flash flood and landslide in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province killed at least 30 villagers Sunday searching for gold in a riverbed, province officials say.

Dozens of people also were injured when the flooding engulfed the river in Kohistan district, an area about 68 miles from Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan.

The flooding comes at the same time that heavy snow has cut off 12 districts from Fayzabad. Abdullah Hamayon Dehqan, head of the provincial Natural Disaster Management department, told Pajhwok Afghan News the districts have , the Nation reported.

The river where the 30 people died had been mined for gold in the past, Nek Mohammad Nazari, the spokesman for the provincial governor, said. The casualty numbers could rise, he said.

The victims were villagers who were mining for gold illegally, according to the official. "Rescue teams have been dispatched to the area to help in recovering the bodies," Nazari said.

Sanaullah Rohani, spokesman for the police chief in Badakhshan, said seven of the injured were in critical condition. According to Rohani, there were about 50 people illegally looking for gold at the time of the landslide.

Fawzia Kofi, a lawmaker from Badakhshan, gave a higher death toll for the tragedy, saying that 40 villagers were killed.

The Badakhshan region has seen many lives lost in avalanches and floods in winters in the past years.

Afghanistan is a mountainous, land-locked nation that has huge, largely untouched reserves of copper, iron ore, chromite, mercury, zinc, gems, including rubies and emeralds, as well as gold and silver.

Mines are scattered across different provinces of the country, but still the government has not been able to achieve investments in this important sector or establish a thriving extraction industry.