At least 1,000 people were killed and 1,500 injured in a powerful earthquake that struck a remote border area in southeastern Afghanistan overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, authorities said, fearing the death toll still rises as relief operations continue.
“People are digging grave after grave,” Paktika provincial information and culture chief Mohammad Amin Huzaifa said in a message to the press.
In his only province, the most affected with that of Khost, the toll “has reached 1,000 dead, and this figure is increasing”, he said.
According to him, some 1,500 people were also injured in Paktika, in what is already the deadliest earthquake in Afghanistan in more than two decades.
“It’s raining, too, and all the houses are destroyed. There are no tents or food. People are still trapped under the rubble […]. We need immediate help,” Huzaifa said.
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.9, occurred at a depth of 10 km around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, very close to the border with Pakistan, according to the American Seismological Institute (USGS). “We have two dead and five wounded in our family,” Arup Khan, a crusader survivor at the hospital in Sharan, the capital of Paktika province, told AFP.
“When I got up, I was covered in dust. People came and took us out. The situation was awful […] There were screams everywhere, the children and my whole family were under the mud,” he added.
Photos and videos posted on social networks show countless collapsed houses in this poor and difficult-to-access rural region.
“We believe that nearly 2,000 houses are destroyed,” Afghanistan Humanitarian Coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov told reporters.
An image released by the Taliban shows residents digging a long trench of graves to bury the dead.
“Much of the region is mountainous, and travel is difficult. It will take time to transport the dead and injured,” said Minister of Natural Disasters Mohammad Abbas Akhund.
Limited in number and capacity for a long time, the emergency services in Afghanistan are unsuited to dealing alone with a major natural disaster. And international aid is difficult to mobilize, NGOs and UN agencies being less present than in the past since the Taliban took power in August. “The government is doing the best it can,” tweeted Anas Haqqani, another senior Taliban official. “We hope that the international community and humanitarian organizations will also help people in this terrible situation. »
The earthquake was felt in several provinces of the region and also in the capital, Kabul, located about 200 km north of its epicenter.
Frequent earthquakes
It was also in neighboring Pakistan, where one person was killed and a few houses damaged. Islamabad has started sending aid, including food, tents and blankets.
“Given the heavy rains and cold, unusual in this season, emergency shelter is an immediate priority,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The population also needs emergency care, food and non-food aid, and assistance with water, hygiene and sanitation services, OCHA said.
“The European Union is monitoring the situation […] and stands ready to coordinate and provide emergency assistance,” tweeted his special envoy to Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson. The United States, on the other hand, said it was “deeply saddened” and is examining its “response options”.
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies at the junction between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. These disasters can be particularly destructive due to the low resilience of rural Afghan homes.
The deadliest earthquake in the recent history of Afghanistan (5,000 dead) took place in May 1998 in the provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan (north-east).
Since the Taliban came to power in Kabul, Afghanistan has been plunged into a serious financial and humanitarian crisis caused by the freezing of billions of assets held abroad and the sudden halt in international aid, which the country at arm’s length for 20 years and which is now coming back in dribs and drabs.