Twenty people died after a boat sank in a river in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province on Saturday, officials said.

The incident happened at 7:30 am on Saturday in Basol area of ​​Mohmand Dara district, the provincial department of information and culture said.

This boat was carrying 25 people, including women and children, 20 of whom died and five others were rescued.

According to officials, the bodies of five people have been found so far and the search for other bodies continues.

The situation in Afghanistan highlights the need to strengthen Tajikistan’s border with the country and take other measures to ensure regional stability, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov said.

“In the Central Asian region, the situation in Afghanistan remains the main source of instability. Numerous radical groups have gained a foothold there, stepping up attempts to promote their ideas in the neighboring countries. The risk of gangs and terrorism spilling outside the country is growing,” he pointed out, addressing a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Council of Defense Ministers in the Kazakh city of Almaty, TASS news agency reported.

According to him, all this requires “constant monitoring and prompt measures aimed at ensuring regional stability.”

“Those particularly include efforts to strengthen the Tajik-Afghan border,” he noted.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has previously dismissed countries’ security concerns over Afghanistan, emphasizing that it will not allow Afghanistan’s soil to be used against any other country.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) holds a firm grip on Afghanistan which is crucial for Russia, Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special presidential representative for Afghanistan and Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Second Asia Department, said.

“We believe that this government is holding consistent control over the country. This is fundamentally important for us,” Kabulov said on the Rossiya-24 television channel, TASS news agency reported. “As any disintegration of Afghanistan would have the most negative reverberations across the region.”.

Kabulov considers that Russia can cooperate with Afghanistan in exporting oil products and ensuring that country’s food security.

“Ensuring the basic essentials for the Afghan economy in the broad sense of this word. Of course, they are oil products, but far beyond that,” he said when asked what form of Russia’s economic cooperation with Afghanistan may be possible.

“Food security is also a [discussion] topic for the Afghan authorities in order to enhance cooperation, and to ensure the supplies of the most needed foodstuffs,” Kabulov added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on May 27 that the initiative to remove the IEA from the list of terrorist organizations “reflects awareness of reality.” Kabulov told TASS earlier that Russia’s Foreign and Justice Ministries had briefed President Vladimir Putin that the IEA could be removed from the list of banned organizations.

On May 28, Putin emphasized the need to build relations with the IEA as they were in power in Afghanistan and controlled the country.