A powerful overnight earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan late Sunday, killing more than 800 people and injuring at least 2,800, the Taliban-run government' spokesperson said.
The 6.0-magnitude quake caused widespread devastation, flattening homes and leaving rescue workers scrambling to reach survivors trapped under the rubble. Officials warned the death toll could rise as emergency teams continue to search remote and mountainous areas.
“This is a tragedy on an immense scale,” a senior Taliban official said, adding that hospitals were overwhelmed with the injured and that urgent medical and humanitarian assistance was needed.
The tremor was felt across several provinces, with the hardest-hit areas reporting collapsed buildings, blocked roads, and entire families buried beneath debris.
The disaster will make things even harder for the South Asian country that is already dealing with a lot of problems, like a big decrease in help from other countries and a lot of people leaving the country because of issues with nearby nations.
The earthquake with a magnitude of 6 caused more than 2,800 injuries, according to a statement from the Afghan interior ministry, which is controlled by the Taliban. The ministry also reported that 622 people had died. The state-owned broadcaster in Afghanistan, Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), reported that the number of casualties was around 500.
In Kabul, the capital, health officials said that rescuers were working quickly to reach distant villages in an area that has often been hit by earthquakes and floods. “Figures from just a few clinics show over 400 injured and dozens of fatalities,” ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman said in a statement that warned of higher casualties.
Images show helicopters ferrying out the affected, while residents helped soldiers and medics carry the wounded to ambulances. Three villages were razed in the province of Kunar, with substantial damage in many others, the health ministry said.
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Reports showed 250 dead and 500 injured, said Najibullah Hanif, the provincial information head of Kunar, adding that the tally could change.
Early reports showed 30 dead in a single village, with hundreds of injured taken to hospital, authorities said. Rescuers were scrambling to find survivors in the area bordering Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, where homes of mud and stone were levelled by the midnight quake hit at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).
“So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work,” a foreign office spokesperson said. Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
A series of earthquakes in its west killed more than 1,000 people last year, underscoring the vulnerability of one of the world’s poorest countries to natural disasters.
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