Taliban plead for help after quake
Foreign aid sought after at least 1,000 killed in Afghanistan
GAYAN, Afghanistan — A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes and killing at least 1,000 people. The disaster posed a new test for Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and relief agencies already struggling with the country’s multiple humanitarian crises.
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 from the 6.1 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 returned to power last August amid the U.S. and NATO withdrawal. The takeover led to a cutoff of vital international financing and most of the world has shunned the Taliban government.
In a rare move, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzadah, who almost never appears in public, pleaded with the international community and humanitarian organizations “to help the Afghan people affected by this great tragedy and to spare no effort.”
At least 2,000 homes were destroyed in the region, where on average every household has seven or eight people living in it, said Ramiz Alakbarov, the U.N. deputy special representative to Afghanistan.
The full extent of the destruction among the villages tucked in the mountains was slow in coming to light. The roads, which are rutted and difficult to
travel in the best of circumstances, may have been badly damaged, and landslides from recent rains made access more difficult.
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. Moreover, most governments are wary of dealing directly with the Taliban.
The quake was centered in Paktika province, 31 miles southwest of the city of Khost, according to neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department. Experts put its depth at 6 miles. Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more damage.
Sarhadi Khosti, 26, who lives in the Sperah district of Khost province, said he had
been woken up by the earthquake after 1 a.m. and that a number of houses — especially those made of earth or wood — had been destroyed.
“For now, we still are busy pulling the dead or injured from under the rubble,” he said.
The European seismological agency said the quake was felt by 119 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Footage from Paktika showed men carrying people in blankets to a waiting helicopter. Other victims were treated on the ground. One person could be seen receiving IV fluids while sitting in a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home.
The death toll reported by the Bakhtar news agency was equal to that from a 2002 quake in northern Afghanistan.
Those are the deadliest since 1998, when an earthquake, also 6.1 in magnitude, and subsequent tremors in the remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people.
Wednesday’s quake took place in a region prone to landslides, with many older, weaker buildings.
“The fear is that the victims will increase further, also because many people could be trapped under collapsed buildings,” said Stefano Sozza, Afghanistan country director for the Italian medical aid group Emergency.
More than 60% of Afghanistan’s population of 38 million already relies on international aid to survive.
Humanitarian agencies still operating in the country, including UNICEF, rushed supplies to the quakestricken
areas. And Pakistan said it would send food, tents, blankets and other essentials.
Obtaining more direct international help may be more difficult: Many countries, including the U.S., funnel humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through the U.N. and other such organizations to avoid putting money in the Taliban’s hands.
The quake “will only add to the immense humanitarian needs in Afghanistan, and it really has to be all hands on deck to make sure that we really limit the suffering that families, that women and children are already going through,” said Shelley Thakral, spokesperson for the U.N. World Food Program in Kabul.
In the capital, Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund convened an emergency meeting at the presidential palace.
“When such a big incident happens in any country, there is a need for help from other countries,” said Sharafuddin Muslim, deputy minister of state for disaster management. “It is very difficult for us to be able to respond to this huge incident.”
That may be difficult given the international isolation of Afghanistan under the Taliban, who were toppled from power by the U.S. in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The newly restored government has issued a flurry of edicts curtailing the rights of women and girls and the news media in a turn back toward the Taliban’s harsh rule from the 1990s.