Avalanches in Afghanistan Bury Main Road, Kill 40

Avalanches roared down the mountains of northern Afghanistan, burying buses and cars on the country’s main highway and trapping scores of people with no food, officials said Wednesday.

At least 40 people were confirmed dead, but the toll was expected to rise, officials said. Rescue operations were hampered by bad weather and lack of fuel to run bulldozers to clear the snow from the Salang highway, the main land route from the capital to the former Soviet Union.