One minute there was a hill behind his picturesque village, and the next Ataullah watched helplessly as tons of mud split away and tumbled down toward the home where his children were playing and his wife was preparing lunch.
He never saw them again, nor his parents, seven of the hundreds killed in a mudslide that obliterated half of the village of Aab Barik in Afghanistan's remote north on Friday.
It was the worst natural disaster in the war-torn country in nearly two decades, killing more people than all the flooding, earthquakes, avalanches and other catastrophes of last year put together.
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