• Government evacuates more than 28,500 people before typhoon hit.
• Bualoi damages over 44,000 homes, inundate nearly 6,000 hectares.
• Rainfall of 500mm (20 inches) forecast in several areas from Sunday.
  

Typhoon Bualoi tore through Vietnam’s coast on Monday, killing at least 13 people and injuring 46, the government said, while accompanying strong winds and rains damaged homes, snapped power links, and flooded roads.

Bualoi weakened into a depression heading for Laos after having made landfall early on Monday, and had whipped up waves as much as eight metres (26 ft) high as it moved along the northern central coast, the national weather agency said.

Among the missing are fishermen whose boats were washed away off the province of Quang Tri, while another fishing boat lost contact, the government’s disaster management agency said.

“I stayed awake the whole night, fearing the door would be pulled off by strong winds,” said Ho Van Quynh of Nghe An province.

Trying to protect homes

His neighbours said they spent the night trying to protect their homes after their apartment building lost power.

“I’ve witnessed many storms, and this is one of the strongest,” said 45-year-old Nguyen Tuan Vinh.

The government evacuated more than 28,500 people before the typhoon hit, while hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled by the closure of four airports in central provinces.

Strong winds killed nine people and injured seven in the province of Ninh Binh, the Vietnam News Agency said.

One person died in floodwaters in Hue city, and a falling tree killed another in Thanh Hoa province, the disaster management agency said.

Bualoi has damaged more than 44,000 homes, inundated nearly 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of rice and other crops, and cut access to several areas, the government said.

No major industrial damage reported

It mentioned no major damage to industrial properties, though large factories in or near the typhoon’s path included some owned by Foxconn, Formosa Plastics, Luxshare, and Vinfast.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh ordered the defence and public security ministries to urgently send troops and policemen to help tackle the storm’s aftermath.

The cyclone has triggered heavy rains across most of Vietnam since Saturday, prompting authorities to warn of a high risk of severe floods and landslides.

Water rose to alarming levels in rivers and reservoirs in the provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh, and Thanh Hoa, the government said, with tens of thousands of families also hit by power blackouts.

Rainfall of 500mm (20 inches) was forecast in several areas over the period from Sunday night through Tuesday, weather authorities said.

With a long coastline facing the South China Sea, Vietnam is prone to typhoons that often form east of the Philippines, where Bualoi killed at least 10 people last week.

Eight-year-old Noorullah and his twin, Sanaullah, spend their days hauling yellow jerrycans on a wheelbarrow through Kabul’s dusty alleys instead of going to school — an ordeal for one family that reflects Afghanistan’s deepening water crisis.

Once supplied with water from their own well, the family of 13 has had to queue at communal taps or pool money for costly water tankers since their supply dried up four years ago.

With climate change increasing the frequency of droughts and erratic rainfall in Afghanistan, aid agencies say Kabul is among the most water-stressed cities in Asia, with shortages fuelling disease, malnutrition and school dropouts.

The Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent Kabul-based research group, in a report this month warned the city’s groundwater could run out by 2030, with other Afghan cities also running dry. The crisis is deepening inequality, as poor families spend up to 30% of their income on tanker water while the wealthy dig ever-deeper private wells.

The twin boys queue with dozens of children at a communal tap, where shoving and shouting often flare into fights as the heat builds.

Standing in line for hours

Noorullah, who has epilepsy, said he once collapsed with a seizure while fetching water. His brother added: “Sometimes we stand in line for three hours. When the heat is too much, we feel dizzy.”

Their father, 42-year-old shopkeeper Assadullah, feels there is no choice. Sitting outside his small shop with empty water barrels stacked nearby, he said: “From morning until evening, my children go for water six or seven times a day.”

“Sometimes they cry and say they cannot fetch more, but what else can we do?”

The shortages have gutted his income too. On a good day, he earns $2–$3, however, he often closes the shop to help his sons push their loads.

“Before, we used to receive water from a company. It lasted us three or four days. Now even that option is gone,” he said.

In the family’s yard, his wife, washes dishes in a plastic basin, measuring out each jug. She said her husband has developed a stomach ulcer, and she contracted H. pylori, a bacterial infection linked to unsafe water. “I boil water twice before giving it to our children, but it is still a struggle,” she said.

Snowmelt once replenished Kabul’s water basin

Kabul’s population has surged past six million in two decades, but investment in water infrastructure has lagged. War wrecked much of the supply network, leaving residents dependent on wells or costly tankers, and those are failing.

Just a few streets from Assadullah, 52-year-old community representative Mohammad Asif Ayubi said more than 380 households in the neighbourhood faced the same plight. “Even wells 120 metres (nearly 400 feet) deep have dried up,” he said, a depth once considered certain to reach water.

Droughts and erratic rainfall patterns have limited the snowmelt that once replenished Kabul’s water basin and left the riverbed dry for much of the year. “Kabul is among the most water-stressed areas,” said Najibullah Sadid, a water researcher based in Germany.

UN envoy Roza Otunbayeva warned the UN Security Council earlier this month that droughts, climate shocks and migration risk turning Kabul into the first modern capital to run out of water “within years, not decades”.

For Assadullah, the wish is simple. “If we had enough water, my children wouldn’t have to run around all day,” he said. “They could go to school. Our whole life would change.”

Social media platform X said on Monday that it was “deeply concerned” by an Indian court’s ruling that quashed its challenge to New Delhi’s content removal mechanisms, and would appeal it to defend freedom of expression in the country.

Elon Musk-owned X has locked horns with Indian authorities for months over the latter’s new content removal system, equating it with censorship. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has argued that the new system tackled a proliferation of unlawful content and ensured accountability online.

The new mechanism “has no basis in the law”, violated rulings from the country’s top court and infringed on Indians’ basic rights of freedom of speech and expression, X said on Monday.

Musk, a self-described free-speech absolutist, has clashed with authorities in several countries over compliance and content takedown demands, but the company’s Indian lawsuit targeted the entire basis for tightened internet regulation in the world’s most populous nation.

Modi’s government has ramped up efforts to police the internet since 2023, by allowing many more officials to file takedown orders and submit them directly to tech firms through a website launched in October.

Last week, an Indian judge said every platform that operated in India “must accept that liberty is yoked with responsibility”.

In its post, X said: “X respects and complies with Indian law… We respectfully disagree with the view that we have no right to raise these concerns because of our incorporation abroad…”