(Kabul) A new earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck western Afghanistan on Wednesday, according to the American Seismological Service (USGS), after that of Saturday which left more than 2,000 dead in the same region.
The quake struck at a shallow depth around 5:10 a.m. local time (8:40 p.m. Eastern Time), with its epicenter about 18 miles (29 kilometers) north of the city of Herat, the USGS said.
The impact of this new earthquake is not yet clear, at a time when thousands of people are homeless after their homes were destroyed on Saturday by the first earthquake of magnitude 6.3, followed by eight aftershocks.
No new deaths were immediately reported.
Local and national officials gave conflicting figures on the number of deaths and injuries in Saturday’s earthquake, but the disaster management ministry said 2,053 people had died.
“We cannot give exact figures for the dead and injured because they are evolving,” said ministry spokesperson Mullah Janan Sayeq.
PHOTO EBRAHIM NOROOZI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Afghans bury hundreds of people killed in an earthquake outside a village in the Zenda Jan district of Herat province.
The UN said Tuesday that the death toll stood at nearly 1,300 dead and nearly 500 missing, the majority of whom were women.
The organization estimates that more than 12,000 people, members of 1,700 families, have been affected, and that “100%” of homes have been destroyed in 11 villages in the rural district of Zenda Jan, located some 30 kilometers to the northwest. from the city of Herat, capital of the province of the same name.
“There is no one left”
Trucks full of food, water and blankets reached isolated villages, where blue tents were pitched amid the ruins.
“There are families who no longer have anyone alive,” sighs Ali Mohammad, 50, about the village of Nayeb Rafi, which previously housed 2,000 families. “There is no one left, not a woman, not a child, no one. »
“There is not a single house left, not even a room where we could spend the night,” Mohammad Naeem, 40, who lost 12 members of his family, including his mother, told AFP.
In Herat, 30 km southeast of the epicenter, Médecins sans Frontières stresses that the injured who need to leave the hospital have nowhere to go.
Providing shelter on a large scale, as winter approaches, will be a challenge for the Afghan Taliban authorities, who took power in August 2021 and have tense relations with international aid organizations.
Most homes in rural Afghanistan are made of mud and built around wooden support posts, with little steel or concrete reinforcement.
Multigenerational extended families typically live under the same roof, meaning severe earthquakes can devastate communities.
Afghanistan is already suffering from a serious humanitarian crisis, with the widespread withdrawal of foreign aid following the return to power of the Taliban.
Herat province, on the border with Iran, has around 1.9 million people and its rural communities are suffering from a years-long drought.
Earthquakes are common in Afghanistan, but Saturday’s was the deadliest to hit the poor, war-ravaged country in more than 25 years.
In June 2022, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake left more than a thousand dead and tens of thousands homeless in the poor province of Paktika (southeast).