Afghan quake killed mostly women, kids
ISLAMABAD – More than 90% of the people killed by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in western Afghanistan last weekend were women or children, U.N. officials reported Thursday.
Taliban officials said Saturday’s earthquake killed more than 2,000 people of all ages and genders across Herat province. The epicenter was in Zenda Jan district, where 1,294 people died, 1,688 were injured and every home was destroyed, according to U.N. figures.
Women and children were more likely to have been at home when the quake struck in the morning, said Siddig Ibrahim, the chief of the UNICEF field office in Herat, said. “When the first earthquake hit, people thought it was an explosion, and they ran into their homes,” he said.
Hundreds of people, mostly women, remained missing in Zenda Jan.
The Afghanistan representative for the United Nations Population Fund, Jaime Nadal, said there would have been no “gender dimension” to the death toll if the quake had happened at night, when more fathers would have been home.
The initial quake, numerous aftershocks and a second 6.3-magnitude quake on Wednesday flattened entire villages, destroying hundreds of mudbrick homes that could not withstand such force. Schools, health clinics and other village facilities also collapsed.
The Norwegian Refugee Council described the devastation as enormous.
“Early reports from our teams are that many of those who lost their lives were small children who were crushed or suffocated after buildings collapsed on them,” the council said.
The maternity hospital in Herat province has cracks that make the structure unsafe. The U.N. Population Fund has provided tents so pregnant women have somewhere to stay and receive care, Nadal said.
Many people inside and outside the provincial capital are still sleeping outside, even as temperatures drop.
The quake has left many children without mothers. Aid officials say orphanages are nonexistent or rare, meaning children who have lost one or both parents may be taken in by surviving relatives or community members.