BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
More than 800 people have died and at least 2,800 injured in Afghanistan earthquake, authorities said on Monday, as rescuers struggled to reach remote areas due to rough mountainous terrain and inclement weather.
The disaster hit intensely amid war-torn nation’s Taliban administration which is already grappling with crises ranging from a sharp drop in foreign aid to deportations of hundreds of thousands of Afghans by neighbouring countries.
Spokesperson for the health ministry in Kabul, Sharafat Zaman, called for international aid to tackle the devastation wrought by the quake of magnitude 6 that struck around midnight local time, at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).
“We need it because here lots of people lost their lives and houses,” he told Reuters.
The quake killed 812 people in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, administration spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said.
Rescuers were battling to reach remote mountainous areas cut off from mobile networks along the Pakistani border, where mudbrick homes dotting the slopes collapsed in the quake.
“The area of the earthquake was affected by heavy rain in the last 24-48 hours as well, so the risk of landslides and rock slides is also quite significant – that is why many of the roads are impassable,” Kate Carey, an officer at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told Reuters.
Rescue teams and authorities are trying to dispose of animal carcasses quickly so as to minimise the risk of contamination to water resources, Carey said.
The death toll could rise as rescue teams access more isolated
locations, authorities said.
Military rescue teams fanned out across the region, the defence ministry said, with 40 flights carrying away 420 wounded and dead.
The quake razed three villages in Kunar, with substantial damage in many others, authorities said. At least 610 people were killed in Kunar with 12 dead in Nangarhar, they added.
This is Afghanistan’s third major deadly quake since the Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew, triggering a cut to the international funding that formed the bulk of government finances.
Diplomats and aid officials say crises elsewhere in the world, along with donor frustration over the Taliban’s policies towards women, including curbs on those who are aid workers, have spurred the cuts in funding.
Even humanitarian aid, aimed at bypassing political institutions to serve urgent needs, has shrunk to $767 million this year, down from $3.8 billion in 2022.
Humanitarian agencies say they are fighting a forgotten crisis in Afghanistan, where the United Nations estimates more than half the population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar of India said it had delivered 1,000 family tents to Kabul and was moving 15 tonnes of food material to Kunar, with more relief material to be sent from India starting on Tuesday.
Afghanistan has been badly affected since U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in January began slashing funding to its humanitarian arm, USAID, and aid programs worldwide as part of a broader plan to end what it deems wasteful spending.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said its mission in Afghanistan was preparing to help those in areas devastated by the quake. Pope Leo also sent condolences for the dead.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
