The death toll from avalanches in northwestern Pakistan rose to 38 after rescue workers found more bodies yesterday in the rubble of demolished homes in a remote village, police said.

The weekend avalanches struck Pakistan's rugged Chitral district, near the border with Afghanistan. Flooding and avalanches have killed more than 50 people over the past 10 days in the region.

One of the avalanches hit 26 homes in the village of Wasij, where police and residents had pulled out 34 lifeless bodies by yesterday, said Ali Khan, a police official in Chitral.

Same family

Another avalanche hit a home in the village of Postaki where four people have died, Khan said.

Police officer Ijaz Khan had said earlier that six people, including five members of the same family, were killed in Postaki. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the differing casualty counts.

Another avalanche hit Olas village on Sunday and 11 people were missing, but police had no information on their fate.

Heavy rains and snow have been lashing Chitral, about 270 kilometers northwest of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, since late last week. In some areas, about 1.83 meters of snow has fallen over the past several days, Ahmed said.

In eastern Tajikistan, a woman and her seven children aged between five and 20 were killed by an avalanche that came down on their house, the government emergencies agency said yesterday.

Another avalanche killed a 17-year-old teenager in a neighboring village in the Jigartal district, 400 kilometers east of the capital Dushanbe, the agency said.