Afghans bury dead, dig for survivors of devastating quake
Villagers rushed to bury the dead on Thursday and dug by hand through the rubble of their homes in search of survivors of a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan that state media reported killed 1,000 people.
The Taliban and the international community that fled their takeover struggled to bring help to the disaster’s victims.
Under a leaden sky in Paktika province, which was the epicentre of Wednesday’s magnitude 6 earthquake, men dug a line of graves in one village, as they tried to lay the dead to rest quickly in line with Muslim tradition. In one courtyard, bodies lay wrapped in plastic to protect them from the rains that are hampering relief efforts for the living. The state-run Bakhtar News Agency reported the death toll and said an estimated 1,500 more were injured.
In the first independent count, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said around 770 people had been killed in Paktika and neighbouring Khost province. It’s not clear how the totals were arrived at, given the difficulties of accessing and communicating with the affected villages tucked into remote mountainsides.
Either grim till would make the quake Afghanistan’s deadliest in two decades, and officials continued to warn the number could still rise.
“They don’t have anything to eat, they are wondering what they can have to eat, and it is also raining,” a Bakhtar reporter said in footage from the quake zone. “Their houses are destroyed. Please help them, don’t leave them alone.”
The disaster heaps more misery on a country where millions already faced increasing hunger and poverty and the health system has crumbled since the Taliban retook power nearly 10 months ago amid the US and NATO withdrawal.
UN agencies and other organizations still operating in Afghanistan said they sent supplies to the area, including medical kits, tents and plastic tarps, but the needs appeared immense as whole villages sustained massive damage.