Rescuers have been trying to reach the site, but vehicles can only be driven to within a six-hour walk of the area, he said.

“It is a disaster,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough aid. The only way to access the area is by helicopter.”

On May 6, another flash flood swept through Dhy Marda village in Sari Pul province, killing 21 people, many of them members of a wedding party.

Sayed Jahangir Kramat, the deputy police chief for the province, said about 45 homes were destroyed and another 150 were damaged in that flood as heavy rains caused floodwaters to rush down the mountains.

Other minor flooding earlier this week in two other districts of Sari Pul province killed three people.

The photos were published in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times. One shows members of the 82nd Airborne Division posing in 2010 with Afghan police holding the severed legs of a suicide bomber. The same platoon a few months later was sent to investigate the remains of three insurgents reported to have accidentally blown themselves up — and soldiers again posed and mugged for a photo with the remains, the newspaper said.

A photo from the second incident appears to show the hand of a dead insurgent resting on a U.S. soldier’s shoulder as the soldier smiles.

The White House called the two-year-old photos “reprehensible,” joining U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other top military officials in expressing regret for the latest in a string of embarrassing missteps by the U.S. military in a war that’s built on earning the trust and confidence of ordinary Afghans. In recent months, American troops have been caught up in controversies over burning Muslim holy books, urinating on Afghan corpses and an alleged massacre of 17 Afghan villagers.

After the burning of the Qurans in February, large-scale demonstrations erupted that killed more left more than 30 Afghan civilians and six Americans dead. However, there were few protests after a video in January when U.S. Marines were found to have recorded themselves urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans.

Many Afghan lawmakers on Thursday played down possibility of the new photos sparking mass protests, saying there was little sympathy among the general population for suicide bombers, especially after weekend Taliban attacks in Kabul and other provinces at the start of the militants’ spring campaign against Afghan security forces and the U.S.-led coalition.

“It is different from an American soldier going and killing children, or Americans burning holy Qurans. These issues and the suicide bombers are completely different,” said Hafiz Mansour, a member of parliament from the northern province of Panjshir. “I don’t think there will be big protests.”

The photos were mentioned on the evening newscasts of several broadcasters, but not everyone in Afghanistan owns a television and very few have access to the Internet. There are no newspapers published on Thursday and Friday, the Afghan weekend.

Mohammad Naim Lalai Hamidzai, a parliamentarian from southern Kandahar, said protests would only erupt if there was an organized attempt to generate them.

“Otherwise the people of Afghanistan remember the killing of innocent people by suicide bombers and people do not have a good image of these suicide bombers,” Hamidzai said. “The burning of Qurans and the killing of children create emotions in people, but there is no sympathy for suicide bombers who kill innocent people.”

Last December, a bomber detonated his explosives-filled vest at the entrance of a mosque in the capital, Kabul, killing 80 worshippers during the Shiite Muslim rituals of Ashoura. It was the single deadliest suicide attack since 2008.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid condemned the pictures as disrespectful. In an email, he condemned both the U.S. soldiers who took the pictures and the Afghan police who also featured in them.

“We strongly condemn these occupiers and their puppets who are without culture, who are brutal and inhuman,” Mujahid said.

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Patrick Quinn in Kabul contributed to this report.

But negotiations have dragged on for months as Karzai has asked for specific commitments from the U.S. before signing. The biggest of these demands — agreements on the transfer of authority over detainees and the conduct of night raids — have been resolved in recent weeks in separate memorandums of understanding.

Both Afghan and U.S. officials are pushing to sign the repeatedly delayed deal before a NATO conference in Chicago in May.

But Karzai said Tuesday that the U.S. needs to go further than vague pledges to continue to fund the Afghan army and police.

“They are providing us money, there is no doubt about that. But they say they will not mention the amount in the agreement. We say: give us less, but mention it in the agreement. Give us less but write it down,” Karzai said in a speech in the capital marking the anniversary of the birth of a revered Afghan writer.

U.S. officials have said that they expect to pay about $4 billion a year to fund Afghan forces. Karzai said he wants a written commitment of at least $2 billion. He said he would rather have a firm commitment to a lower figure than a verbal promise for a higher one.

“You have to mention ‘at least’ in there,” Karzai said.

The comments also suggest that Karzai himself may be growing increasingly worried that the U.S. will not make good funding pledges once there are drastically fewer American soldiers risking their lives on Afghan soil.

The U.S. has already greatly reduced its funding for development programs in Afghanistan and the past year has seen a number of NATO nations trying to speed their exits from the country even as they continue to promise to support the Afghan government. On Tuesday, Australia because the latest ally to speed up its timetable as Prime Minister Julia Gillard said they expect to pull out troops nearly a year earlier than planned.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment on the demand.

“We’re not going to comment on ongoing negotiations,” Gavin Sundwall said.

U.S. officials have said previously that they expect the document to address economic and development support for Afghanistan but it is unclear if the American negotiators would have the legal authority to make a specific financial commitment.

Much of the contention over the strategic partnership deal with the U.S. appears to come from two very different opinions from the two governments about what the goals of the document should be. U.S. officials involved in the negotiations have said that it is not meant to set forth exact rules, but to establish a framework between the two countries to continue to work together for years to come.

The Afghan government, meanwhile, has repeatedly demanded concrete commitments and rules for U.S. forces. It sees the document as necessary to establish Afghan sovereignty after years of letting policy be set by the international allies who bankroll the government.

If the strategic partnership is not signed by the NATO summit on May 20-21, it would not necessarily derail negotiations, but it would strike another blow to a U.S.-Afghan alliance that has been on edge for much of this year.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has since asked for international forces to pull out of Afghan villages now and to hand over control of countrywide security by 2013. The comments by his first vice president on Tuesday echoed Karzai’s vow that Afghan sovereignty must be respected.

“This strategic partnership, for which work is continuing right now, will be according to the national sovereignty of Afghanistan and based on the interests of both countries,” First Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim told Afghans celebrating the Persian new year, or Nowruz, in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Before the long-term deal can be signed, the Afghan government has said the two countries must come to an agreement about how international forces conduct night raids in Afghanistan. Karzai has insisted that international troops stop the operations altogether, but NATO and U.S. officials have maintained that the nighttime raids are essential for their strategy in Afghanistan.

In Washington, a senior defense official said U.S. officials are considering instituting some process that could require warrants ahead of time for the raids. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of talking about ideas the two nations are just starting to discuss.

He said there has been “no offer” on the idea of warrants, but rather officials are just in the beginning stages of talking with the Afghans on how “we could move those operations into a law enforcement environment.”

An Afghan official said that “limiting all special operations, including special operations at night, to warrants from competent Afghan judges will most likely be an element of the discussions” but that nothing was decided. The official spoke anonymously to talk about closed-door negotiations.

In his own Nowruz address to Afghans, the commander of NATO and U.S. troops in the country said the country’s international allies remain committed to a long-lasting “partnership” with Afghanistan.

“On this new year, we reaffirm our pledge that we are committed to a long and lasting partnership with you, our Afghan brothers, a partnership well beyond 2014,” Marine Gen. John Allen said in a recorded statement.

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Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report.