Afghan soldiers and villagers used home-made tools to dig for bodies and survivors on Wednesday after avalanches killed at least 165 people in a mountain pass.

Rescue workers pulled scores of bodies from the snow after hundreds of people were buried in the treacherous northern Salang Pass in the Hindu Kush in one of the country's worst such disasters, an official said Wednesday.

A heavy blizzard struck the busy road connecting the capital Kabul with the north of the country Monday, triggering avalanches that buried people in vehicles on the strategic pass and injured dozens of travellers.

"According to the latest information from the area, 165 of our countrymen have been killed and 135 have been injured," Suraya Dalil, acting public health minister, told reporters.

The death toll was collated from hospitals, she said.

Ahmad Shah Waheed, deputy public works minister, said 1,600 people had been rescued but hundreds of vehicles remained trapped in the rugged pass where heavy snow storms blocked the traffic.

"The casualty figure could go higher," he said, adding that many people were believed to be still stranded in their vehicles.

"We could have had an even greater catastrophe if we had not stopped the traffic," he said.

Up to 16,000 vehicles traverse the 3.5-kilometre (two-mile) pass, located about 3,400 metres (11,000 feet) above sea level, every day.

"That day we cut down the traffic flow (because of the inclement weather) and only a small number of cars, maybe few hundred, passed through," he said, referring to Monday, when the storms hit.

An AFP photographer on the scene said the massive avalanches had pushed vehicles from the road into the deep valley below -- at least nine cars and two large buses lay upside down on the valley floor.

Afghan soldiers, police and local villagers were digging through the snow in search of bodies, using shovels and handmade tools.

The rescue and recovery effort was backed up by heavy digging machinery and bulldozers and more soldiers were arriving by helicopter.

President Hamid Karzai's office issued a statement saying he was "deeply saddened by the rising number of casualties".

Large parts of northern Afghanistan have been relatively sheltered from the eight-year Taliban insurgency that 113,000 NATO and US forces are in the country trying to quell.

The Salang Pass in the only major route linking the country's north and south. It was built with Soviet help in the 1950s to bypass central Bamiyan province through the Hindu Kush range.

It provides the shortest route linking the two ends of the mountainous country and as one of the highest mountain highways in the world was hailed as an engineering feat upon its completion.

General Ahmad Zia Yaftali, chief doctor in the Afghan army, earlier Wednesday put the overall toll at 68, after bodies were counted from two sites on the pass that had been buried by snow.

An unknown number of bodies was recovered from a third location along the pass, he said, adding that snowfall was hampering the risky operation.

At least 14 rescued survivors had been trapped in a bus, said Abdul Basir Salangi, governor of Parwan province, where the disaster took place.

"It is a miracle these people survived buried under the snow for 37 hours," he said, adding that snow had entered the bus through broken windows.

Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar on Tuesday fended off questions about why the road was open in the first place, insisting the situation appeared manageable until the storm struck abruptly.

"All of a sudden, a storm hit the area, which resulted in a number of avalanches hitting the main highway and closing the road for up to 3.5 kilometres (two miles)," Atmar told a news conference.

Such deadly avalanches are rare in Afghanistan during winter, but are more frequent in the spring when heavy snows melt.