Afghan quake misery intensifies
Aid, food crises compound woes; state media report toll at 1,150
GAYAN, Afghanistan — Tents, food and medical supplies rolled into the mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan where thousands were left homeless or injured by this week's powerful earthquake, which state media said killed 1,150 people. A new aftershock Friday took five more lives and deepened the misery.
Among the dead from Wednesday's magnitude 6 quake are 121 children, but that figure is expected to climb, said Mohamed Ayoya, UNICEF's representative in Afghanistan. He said close to 70 children were injured.
Overstretched aid agencies said the disaster underscored the need for the international community to rethink its financial cutoff of Afghanistan since Taliban insurgents seized the country 10 months ago. That policy, halting billions in development aid and freezing vital reserves, has helped push the economy into collapse and plunge Afghanistan deeper into humanitarian crises and near famine.
The quake struck a remote, deeply impoverished region of small towns and villages tucked among rough mountains near the Pakistani border, collapsing stone and mud-brick homes and in some cases killing entire families. Nearly 3,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged in Paktika and Khost provinces, state media reported.
The effort to help the victims has been slowed both by geography and Afghanistan's decimated condition.
Rutted roads through the mountains, already slow to drive on, were made worse by quake damage and rain. The International Red Cross has five hospitals in the region, but damage to the roads made it difficult for those in the worse-hit areas to reach them, said Lucien Christen, Red Cross spokesman in Afghanistan.
Some of the injured had to be taken to a hospital in Ghazni, more than 80 miles away that the International Red Cross has kept running by paying salaries to staff over the past months, he said. Many health facilities around the country have shut down, unable to pay personnel or obtain supplies.
On Friday, Pakistan's Meteorological Department reported a new, 4.2 magnitude quake. Afghanistan's state-run Bakhtar News Agency said five people were killed and 11 injured in Gayan, a district of Paktika province that is one of the areas worst hit in Wednesday's quake.
Bakhtar's Taliban director Abdul Wahid Rayan said Friday the death toll from Wednesday had risen to 1,150 people, with at least 1,600 people injured.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has put the death toll at 770 people. It's not clear how death toll counts are being reached, given the access difficulties.
At Urgan, the main city in Paktika province, U.N. World Health Organization medical supplies were unloaded at the main hospital. In quake-hit villages, UNICEF delivered blankets, basic supplies and tarps for the homeless to use as tents.
Aid groups said they feared cholera could break out after damage to water and hygiene systems.
In main villages of Gayan District, residents crowded around trucks delivering aid, an Associated Press team saw Friday.
For more than 24 hours after the quake, many had been on their own, digging through the rubble by hand in search of survivors. Still, help was slow to filter across the area.
Trucks of food and other necessities arrived from Pakistan, and planes full of humanitarian aid landed from Iran, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. But it was not clear how long it would take to reach devastated villages.
Other countries sending aid have taken pains to make clear it would not go through the Taliban. While they are rushing to help the quake victims, aid groups said keeping Afghanistan just above catastrophe through humanitarian programs is not sustainable. International sanctions on Afghan banks make it difficult to send funds into the country.
Afghanistan's economy had been reliant on international donor support even before the Taliban takeover last August, ending a 20-year war.
Many aid groups have left the country.
U.N. agencies and other remaining organizations have fed millions and kept the medical system alive. But with international donors lagging, U.N. agencies face a $3 billion funding shortfall this year.
The International Rescue Agency's vice president for Asia, Adnan Junaid, said the international community must set a roadmap to resume development help and release Afghanistan's frozen reserves.