Afghan pleas for aid after earthquake

Survivors have been digging by hand in eastern Afghanistan villages reduced to rubble by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 1,000 people as the Taliban and international community struggle to aid the disaster’s victims.

The quake was Afghanistan’s deadliest in two decades, and officials said the toll could rise. An estimated 1,500 others were reported injured, the state-run news agency said.

The disaster inflicted by the six magnitude quake heaps more misery on a country where millions face increasing hunger and poverty and the health system has been crumbling since the Taliban retook power nearly 10 months ago amid the US and Nato withdrawal.

The takeover led to a cutoff of vital international financing, and most of the world has shunned the Taliban government.

“We ask from the Islamic Emirate and the whole country to come forward and help us,” said a survivor who gave his name as Hakimullah.

“We are with nothing and have nothing, not even a tent to live in.”

The full extent of the destruction among the villages in the mountains was slow in coming to light.

Roads, rutted and difficult to travel in the best of circumstances, may have been badly damaged, and landslides from recent rains made access even more difficult. While modern buildings

withstand magnitude six earthquakes elsewhere, Afghanistan’s mud-andbrick homes and landslideprone mountains make such quakes even more dangerous.

Rescuers rushed in by helicopter, but the relief effort could be hindered by the exodus of many international aid agencies from Afghanistan after the

Taliban takeover last August.

The Taliban had not formally requested that the UN mobilise international search-and-rescue teams or obtain equipment from neighbouring countries, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN deputy special representative to Afghanistan. But officials from UN agencies said the

Taliban was giving them full access to the area.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter that eight trucks of food from Pakistan arrived in Paktika. And state television acknowledged that US President Joe Biden – their one-time enemy – offered condolences and had promised aid.

TOLL: Victims of the earthquake are prepared for burial by family members.