Rescuers are trying to reach remote areas in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar region after a devastating earthquake killed at least 1,411 people and wounded 3,124 others, according to Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
On Tuesday, Mujahid wrote in a post on X that 5,412 houses were destroyed due to the earthquake’s intensity.
Kunar’s head of disaster management, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said earlier on Tuesday that efforts would be extended to more of the region’s mountainous areas.
“We cannot accurately predict how many bodies might still be trapped under the rubble,” Ehsan said.
“Our effort is to complete these operations as soon as possible and to begin distributing aid to the affected families,” he said, adding that some of those who were injured have been transferred to hospitals in neighbouring Nangarhar province and the capital, Kabul.
Amid ongoing recovery efforts, the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported that northeastern Afghanistan was hit by a magnitude 5.2 earthquake, which struck at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles).
One of the deadliest earthquakes the tremor-prone country has experienced struck just before midnight on Sunday. It was a shallow, magnitude 6 quake with its epicentre at a depth of about 8km (5 miles).
The mountainous terrain in the area is making rescue work difficult. Volunteers have been unable to reach isolated areas along the Pakistani border, where mostly mud-brick homes have been destroyed.
According to Ehsan, gaining vehicle access to the narrow mountainous roads in the area has been the main obstacle for relief work. The roads have been damaged by the quake or covered in landslides.
‘Nobody to help them and pull them out’
Villagers have joined the rescue efforts.
Obaidullah Stoman, 26, who travelled to the village of Wadir in Kunar’s Nugral district to search for a friend, told the AFP news agency that there was “only rubble left”.
“I’m searching here, but I didn’t see him. It was very difficult for me to see the conditions here,” he said.
Akhlaq, 14, who was injured and evacuated to the hospital, lost five members of his family to the earthquake in the remote village.
“Our whole house collapsed. My brothers and father were all buried. Only I survived and made it out,” he told AFP.
“Then I heard my father’s voice, and I managed to rescue him,” he said, adding, “There are victims who are still under the rubble, but there is nobody to help them and pull them out.”
‘Extremely challenging’
The lack of road access has forced emergency response teams to rely on helicopters, Indrika Ratwatte, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, said at a news briefing in Kabul.
“There’s been lots of landslides and rock falls, and access has been very limited to everybody in the first 24 hours,” he said.
In a situational update, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the destruction of roads and the remote locations of many of the affected villages “severely impede the delivery of aid”.
“The pre-earthquake fragility of the health system means local capacity is overwhelmed, creating total dependence on external actors,” the WHO said, adding that more than 12,000 people have been affected.
Homa Nader, the acting deputy head of delegation in Afghanistan for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told Al Jazeera it has become “nearly impossible” to continue with the rescue efforts due to the destruction of the roads.
“The challenges still remain. We had … the disaster management directive that came in yesterday with heavy machinery to clear out some of the road and the rubble to be able to support with access so that humanitarian actors like the Afghan Red Crescent Society can go and operate search and rescue operations, but unfortunately, it’s extremely challenging,” Nader said on Tuesday.
She warned that it is “absolutely likely that those [death toll] numbers would dramatically increase because we are not getting to the most remote villages as of yet”.
The United Kingdom has allocated 1 million pounds ($1.35m) to support the efforts of the United Nations and the Red Cross in delivering healthcare and emergency supplies.
In a statement, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “This emergency funding will help our partners to deliver critical healthcare and emergency supplies to the most hard-hit.”
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said his country has delivered 1,000 family tents to Kabul and was transporting 15 tonnes of food to Kunar with additional relief materials scheduled to be sent later on Tuesday.
The European Union also announced that it was sending 130 tonnes of emergency supplies and providing one million euros ($1.16m) to help victims of the disaster.
Afghanistan has experienced devastating earthquakes in the past due to its location at the point where the Indian and Eurasian plates converge.
The deadliest earthquake took place in October 2023. It killed more than 2,000 people in the western province of Herat.
