Rescuers struggle to reach quake-hit regions
Afghan, Pakistani death toll likely to leap as rescuers see damage in remote areas
MINGORA, PAKISTAN— As the death toll in the massive earthquake that struck the remote Hindu Kush mountains soared above 300, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warned on Tuesday that casualty figures will likely leap once relief workers return from villages so remote they can only be accessed on foot or by donkey.
Rescuers in both countries were struggling to reach quake-stricken regions as officials said the combined death toll from Monday’s earthquake rose to 376.
Authorities said 258 people died in Pakistan and 115 in Afghanistan in the magnitude-7.5 quake, which was centred in Afghanistan’s sparsely populated Badakhshan province that borders Pakistan, Tajikistan and China. Three people died on the In- dian side of the disputed region of Kashmir.
The earthquake, with its epicentre close to the Badakhshan district of Jarm, damaged many of the few existing roads, officials said. Dropping aid by air will be the only way to reach many of the needy, but those operations were not likely to start for many days until survey teams on foot return and report on the damage.
The Pakistani town closest to the epicentre is Chitral.
Monday’s quake shook buildings in the capital, Islamabad, and cities elsewhere in Pakistan and Afghanistan for up to 45 seconds in the early afternoon, creating cracks in walls and causing blackouts.
The earthquake destroyed more than 7,600 homes across Afghanistan and injured 558 people, according to a statement from President Ashraf Ghani’s office after he had met with disaster management officials. He ordered the military to make assets available for the relief effort.
Badakhshan Gov. Shah Waliullah Adeeb said more than 1,500 houses there were either destroyed or partially destroyed. The province’s casualty figures of 11 dead and 25 injured “will rise by the end of the day, once the survey teams get to the remote areas and villages,” Adeeb said.
Food and other essentials were ready to go, he said, but “getting there is not easy.” Many people in stricken areas were sleeping outdoors, braving freezing temperatures for fear of aftershocks.
Afghan authorities said they were scrambling to access the hardest-hit areas near the epicentre, located 73 kilometres south of Fayzabad, the capital of Badakhshan province.
Badakhshan is one of the poorest areas of Afghanistan and frequently hit by floods, snowstorms and mudslides. Its valleys and mountains make access to many areas by road almost impossible at the best of times. It often has big earthquakes, but casualty figures are usually low because it is so sparsely populated, with fewer than one million people.
The Taliban issued a statement calling on all Afghans “not to hold back in providing shelter, food and medical supplies” to earthquake victims and said its fighters would also lend a hand.
The insurgents, fighting to overthrow the Kabul government for 14 years, have built a presence in northern provinces this year, notably in Badakhshan. Some districts, including Jarm, have been seized briefly by Taliban gunmen. Officials have said it is part of their strategy to take control of strategically insignificant areas to force the Afghan government to spread its military resources ever-thinner in the fight to defeat the insurgency.
In Pakistan, the picturesque Swat Valley and areas around Dir, Malakand and Shangla towns in the mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were hard-hit by the earthquake. Officials said 202 of the dead were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
More than 2,000 people were injured in Monday’s temblor, which also damaged more than 4,000 homes in Pakistan, officials said.