The death toll from Afghanistan‘s worst earthquake in years passed 2,000 on Thursday as rescuers continue to find bodies in the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Hamdullah Fitrat, a spokesman for the Taliban authorities, said hundreds more bodies were recovered in the hardest-hit Kunar province, where many people live in hard-to-reach villages and river valleys. He said 2,205 people were dead and 3,640 people injured.
The 6.0-magnitude earthquake flattened houses near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan on Sunday. Aftershocks rattled the country in the following days, causing further panic and cutting off roads, and it was expected the toll would rise from a previous figure of about 1,500.
The UAE is among several countries to have flown in aid, with the Emirates Red Crescent providing medical supplies and shelters. But limited access to the mountainous areas has delayed rescue efforts.
“Many survivors are still believed to be trapped beneath collapsed homes in remote villages, and the window for finding them alive is rapidly closing,” the World Health Organisation said late on Wednesday.
Poor infrastructure in the impoverished country, still fragile from four decades of war, has also stymied the emergency response in a country where earthquakes are common.
A 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan in October 2023. The Taliban authorities said at least 4,000 people died, while the UN gave a lower death toll of about 1,500.
The WHO warned that local healthcare services were “under immense strain” after the latest disaster, with shortages of trauma supplies, medicine and staff. The agency has appealed for $4 million to deliver life-saving health interventions and expand mobile health services.
“Every hour counts,” said Jamshed Tanoli, a WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan said in a statement. “Hospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything.”
The loss of US aid to the country in January has accelerated a rapid depletion of emergency stockpiles and resources. Aid workers say the earthquake creates a crisis within a crisis as Afghanistan struggles under Taliban rule.
The country is already contending with endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover. UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said the disaster had affected more than 500,000 people in eastern Afghanistan.
Even as Afghanistan reeled from its latest disaster, Pakistan began a new push to expel Afghans, with more than 6,300 people crossing the Torkham border point in quake-hit Nangarhar province on Tuesday.
(national news)