More than 1400 people have died and over 3000 injured in the 6.0-magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan. Photo / Getty Images
More than 1400 people have died from the 6.0-magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, a senior Afghan official says, as the Taliban appeals for international aid and rescue workers warn that many people might still be trapped beneath the rubble.
More than 3000 people were injured in Sunday night’s quake, Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban Government’s chief spokesman, said in a post on X. Officials warned that the number of victims was likely to continue to rise sharply.
Rescuers were struggling to access some of the affected regions, after landslides triggered by the quake blocked many roads. Damage was most severe in Konar province, a remote and rural part of Afghanistan, where officials said entire villages had been flattened. Afghan officials also reported casualties in the neighbouring Nangahar province – where the earthquake’s epicentre is – and Laghman province.
“International organisations have played a key role during such disasters in the past,” said Hammad. “We definitely need international humanitarian aid.”
Several neighbouring countries, including Iran, Pakistan and China, have offered their support to the Taliban Government to help with disaster relief. But concerns were mounting that recent US aid cuts and reluctance among international donors to be seen as supportive of the Taliban-run regime might hamper the disaster response.
Kate Carey, deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan, said recent funding cuts grounded the UN humanitarian air service helicopter in the country.
“We are now seeking to recommission that in the course of the next couple of days, so that we can get that air support to those most remote locations.
“We’ve been heavily impacted by the drastic cuts in funding that we’ve experienced over the last six months.”
Before recent funding cuts, the United States provided nearly 60% of overall global funding for emergency shelters in Afghanistan, according to UN data.
Humanitarian organisations have had to lay off hundreds of staffers in Afghanistan in recent months, and hospital workers are reporting shortages of medicines across the country.
A doctor in Nangahar, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to journalists, said several hospitals in the proximity of the earthquake’s epicentre had suffered under funding cuts.
“The wards are working,” he said, “but this tragedy is far beyond the resources of the government or of local organisations.”
Meanwhile, time was running out on Tuesday to find survivors.
“I heard children screaming from beneath the rubble,” said Naseerullah Shinwari, 29, a volunteer rescuer, who returned from the earthquake zone earlier in the day.
A girl in the village where he had been helping was pulled from the rubble alive on Monday evening, “tightly holding the hand of her dead brother”, he said.
Locals lacked shelter, food and basic supplies, said Jamil-ur-Rahman Noori, a 34-year-old teacher. Noori’s house in the Dara-e-Noor area of Nangahar province was severely damaged and he has moved with his family to an unaffected area, leaving behind nearly all their belongings.
“People cannot stay in this mountainous area, where they fear that rocks might fall at any moment,” he said.
The British Government on Tuesday announced emergency aid for Afghan earthquake victims but emphasised that “UK assistance is channelled through experienced partners, ensuring aid reaches those in need and does not go to the Taliban”.
Only Russia has so far recognised the Taliban Government. The regime’s continued international isolation is largely the result of its extreme form of gender segregation: banning female education beyond sixth grade, barring female public workers from government offices and dispatching morality police to ensure that women adhere to draconian rules governing their dress and movements.
The Trump administration this year cut nearly all US-funded humanitarian and economic projects in Afghanistan, which had accounted for more than 40% of all foreign assistance. As justification, the White House has said that “US taxpayer-funded aid to Afghanistan would be routinely confiscated by the Taliban and would not reach the Afghan people”.
The US cuts came amid a broader downturn for the global aid sector. Other donors, including France, Sweden and the UK, have also recently cut foreign assistance.
Aid workers in Afghanistan say the impact of the cuts has been most severely felt by ordinary people. The Taliban-run Government is struggling to keep clinics and hospitals stocked, and the World Food Programme, which relied on the US for more than a third of its Afghanistan funding in recent years, said this northern summer that it can support only 1 million of the 10 million Afghans who are in urgent need of food assistance.
While international agencies initially filled humanitarian gaps after the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, “the longer we’re seeing the consequences of [President Donald Trump’s] attacks on international aid agencies and the withdrawal of the US from so many of those frameworks, we’re seeing that those gaps remain unfilled”, said Daniel Aldrich, co-director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University.
Joy Singhal, a representative for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said its Taliban Government-supported affiliate was – for now – relying on local stocks that were largely replenished before recent funding cuts.
“But that would not be enough – they would run out in the next week or so.”
While efforts were under way to divert stocks from other parts of the country, he said the situation on the ground will degrade further “if we are not able to replenish them in time”.
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