KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct 27, (Agencies): A roof collapsed during a wedding on Wednesday in northern Afghanistan killing 65 people, nearly all women and children, said police.
Most of the dead were women celebrating the wedding on the top floor of a mud brick house packed with guests, said Jawad Bashart, spokesman of the Baghlan provincial police. Only one adult male was killed.
He added that 12 children were among the dead and another 40 people were wounded in the remote Jelga district.
Women and men traditionally have separate celebrations at weddings.
Dr Salim Rasouli, the provincial health chief, said that the incident happened in the afternoon but that the district was very far and the road was unsafe to travel at night.
“Unfortunately it is a very remote area. We don’t have any access. The nearest clinic to that area is in the neighboring district,” he said.
Rasouli said he had heard six women had been brought to the hospital in the neighboring district for treatment by their families.

Houses in rural Afghanistan are traditionally built with mud bricks and wooden beams. Access to health care is also poor, with few clinics or hospitals and mostly unpaved roads.
The United States will not support a peace in Afghanistan or any conflict zone that sacrifices women’s rights, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday.
Clinton also said the mass rape of hundreds of women in Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year was a “tragic rebuke” of international efforts to help women caught in conflict zones.
Women’s involvement in peacemaking efforts is now a “necessary global security imperative,” the US secretary of state told a special UN Security Council debate on women and security.
Clinton — to many observers the world’s most powerful woman — highlighted US efforts to reinforce women’s representation in Afghanistan, where US-led international forces are battling the Taleban militia which repressed women when in power.

“We believe the potential for sustainable peace will be subverted if women are silenced or marginalized,” Clinton said. “No peace that sacrifices women’s rights is a peace that we can afford to support.”
The debate was held on the 10th anniversary of a landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325 which called for the greater involvement of women in ending conflict and greater protection for women and girls in wars.
Afghanistan said on Wednesday that a major military operation against the Taleban in their southern heartland was coming to an end, claiming that victory was in sight.
The insurgency is fiercest in the southern province of Kandahar, where thousands of US-led troops and Afghan forces have stepped up operations since the spring in a bid to reclaim the Taleban stronghold.
General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Afghan defence ministry spokesman, said that the assault was set to be wrapped up “in weeks.”

“The Kandahar operation is in its last stages,” Azimi told a news conference in Kabul, saying that the rebels had fled most areas without fighting.
Asked whether the Taleban were defeated in the area, he said: “Well, when an area is cleaned of the enemy, it means they’re defeated.”
He refused to give details, saying a full report of the operation including casualties will be released at the end of the offensive.
Meanwhile, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said it was “impossible” for coalition forces to secure victory in Afghanistan in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday.
Gorbachev, who was in charge when Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after a war lasting nearly a decade, added that the alternative to pulling out troops was “another Vietnam” which “wouldn’t work.”

He backed US President Barack Obama’s July 2011 date for starting to withdraw troops and handing more responsibility to Afghan forces, even though he said it would be “difficult.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered a small concession over the timing of a ban on private security firms, which strained ties with Washington, but some aid groups said on Wednesday the ban would not affect them much.
Karzai has stressed his commitment to a decree disbanding private security companies, spurring concern in Washington that aid work in Afghanistan may already be starting to suffer over security fears, but on Wednesday said the original December deadline could be extended up to two months.
Some US-funded development companies have said they have started scaling back projects. On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Karzai to recommend a joint plan to replace the guard firms gradually rather than enforce a ban that could threaten millions of dollars in aid work.

The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), an umbrella group for non-government organisations (NGOs) in Afghanistan, said the ban would not affect aid work by its members because most operated without armed protection.
“There is a big distinction between NGOs and development companies that rely on private companies to provide security,” ACBAR Director Laurent Saillard told Reuters.
“Aid delivered by NGOs will not suffer with this ban, but aid delivered by these development companies will suffer.”