KABUL, Afghanistan –
A powerful earthquake struck a harsh mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, leveling stone and brick houses and killing at least 1,000 people in the country’s deadliest earthquake in two decades, the state agency said.
About 1,500 others were reported injured, and officials said the death toll could rise.
The disaster caused by the 6.1 magnitude earthquake was a major test for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which regained power nearly 10 months ago after the United States and its NATO allies withdrew from the country and have since been largely avoided. from the rest of the world.
Rarely, Taliban chief leader Haybatullah Akhundzada, who almost never appears in public, called on the international community and humanitarian organizations to “help the Afghan people affected by this great tragedy and spare no effort to help those affected.” ”
Residents in a remote area near the Pakistani border have been searching for victims, dead or alive, digging with their bare hands in the rubble, according to footage from the Bakhtar news agency. It was not immediately clear whether heavy rescue equipment was being sent or even if it could reach the area.
At least 2,000 homes have been destroyed in the region, where an average of seven or eight people live in each home, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN deputy special envoy to Afghanistan.
The full extent of the destruction among the villages tucked away in the mountains was slowly unfolding. Roads – difficult to cross in the best of times – may have been severely damaged, and recent rainfall has made access even more difficult.
Rescuers rushed by helicopter, but relief efforts could be hampered by the eviction of many international aid agencies from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover last August. In addition, most governments are wary of dealing directly with the Taliban.
In a sign of confusion between the Taliban and the rest of the world, Alakbarov said the Taliban had not formally asked the United Nations to mobilize international search and rescue teams or obtain equipment from neighboring countries to complement dozens of ambulances and helicopters sent by Afghanistan. authorities.
The disaster only exacerbates the misery in Afghanistan, which is already deep in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions facing growing hunger and poverty following the suspension of international funding for the Taliban. This has sparked a huge aid program, but to avoid giving money to the Taliban, the world has channeled funding through the UN and other humanitarian agencies, a system that may be too slow to respond urgently to the quake.
The quake was located in Paktika province, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the city of Khost, according to the meteorological department of neighboring Pakistan. Experts estimate its depth at only 10 kilometers (6 miles). Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage.
The European Seismological Agency said the quake affected more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) of 119 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Footage from Paktika shows men transporting people with blankets to a waiting helicopter. Other victims were treated on the spot. One person could be seen taking IV fluids while sitting in a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home, and even more were lying in wheelchairs. Some images show residents digging through clay bricks and other rubble. The roofs and walls had collapsed.
The death toll was equal to that of the 2002 earthquake in northern Afghanistan. These are the deadliest since 1998, when a magnitude 6.1 earthquake and subsequent quakes in the far northeast killed at least 4,500 people.
Wednesday’s quake struck a landslide-prone region, with much older buildings likely to collapse.
“The fear is that the number of victims will increase even more, also because many people may be trapped under collapsed buildings,” said Stefano Soca, director of the Italian emergency medical team in Afghanistan.
Emergency aid, which was delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan before the disaster, sent seven ambulances and personnel to areas near the quake zone.
The UNICEF Children’s Agency had health and nutrition teams in the area and sent trucks with blankets, tents and other supplies, said Sam Mort, UNICEF’s chief communications officer in Afghanistan, to British television Sky. Hospitals in the region are overcrowded with wounded, she said.
Pakistan has said it will send food, tents, blankets and other essentials.
The quake “will only contribute to the enormous humanitarian needs in Afghanistan, and we really need to be there for everyone to make sure that we really reduce the suffering that families, women and children are already going through,” said Shelley Tacral, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program. UN in Kabul.
In the capital, Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Ahund convened an emergency meeting at the presidential palace.
“When such a major incident occurs in any country, there is a need for help from other countries,” said Sharafudin Muslim, deputy state minister for disaster management. “It is very difficult for us to respond to this huge incident.
This could be difficult given Afghanistan’s international isolation under the Taliban, which was overthrown by the United States following the 9/11 attacks. The newly-restored government has issued a series of decrees restricting the rights of women and girls and the media in the opposite direction to the austerity of the Taliban since the late 1990s.
“This adds a lot to the daily burden of survival,” said Alakbarov of the United Nations. “We are not optimistic today.”
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Associated Press writers Rahim Fayez and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and John Gambrel and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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