A powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend killed more 1,400 and injured 3,000 others, the Taliban government said Tuesday, making it one of the deadliest to hit the country in decades.
The casualty toll has mounted steadily since the 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit late Sunday night, devastating remote areas in mountainous provinces near the border with Pakistan.
Chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X Tuesday that 1,411 people were killed and 3,124 people were injured in the hard-hit province of Kunar alone.
Another dozen people were killed and hundreds injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province.
The earthquake could impact “hundreds of thousands”, said United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte.
Rescuers were still desperately searching Tuesday for survivors in the rubble of homes flattened in Kunar.
Emergency “operations continued throughout the night”, the head of the Kunar Provincial Disaster Management Authority, Ehsanullah Ehsan, told AFP.
He said there were “still injured people left in the distant villages” in need of evacuation to hospitals.
Villagers joined the rescue efforts, using their bare hands to clear debris from mud and stone homes built into steep valleys.
Obaidullah Stoman, 26, who travelled to the village of Wadir to search for a friend, was overwhelmed by the level of destruction.
“I’m searching here, but I didn’t see him. It was very difficult for me to see the conditions here,” he told AFP.
LND/SAE
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