Emergency teams tried to help victims of the earthquake that killed at least 1,000 people in southeastern Afghanistan this Thursday (23), in adverse conditions due to lack of resources, mountainous terrain and heavy rains.
A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck a poor and inaccessible rural area close to the Pakistani border early Wednesday.
The aftermath of the earthquake poses a challenge for the Taliban, who came back to power in August last year in a country already facing a deep economic and humanitarian crisis.
It was the largest earthquake in Afghanistan in over two decades. At least 1,000 people were killed and 1,500 injured in the worst-hit Paktika province alone.
Authorities fear the death toll could rise further as large numbers of people are trapped under the rubble of homes.
“It is very difficult to get information from the region due to the poor telephone network,” Paktika’s Minister of Information and Culture, Mohammad Amin Huzaifa, told AFP.
He also explained that access was difficult because “the area was affected by flooding caused by heavy rains during the night”, which caused landslides that delayed rescue efforts and affected telephone and power lines.
After freezing overseas assets and cutting off Western international aid that has supported the country for 20 years, the Taliban government mobilized the military despite very limited financial resources.
international aid
There are a limited number of helicopters and planes in Afghanistan. Explaining that at least 2,000 houses, each with an average of seven or eight people, were destroyed, the UN also drew attention to the lack of equipment to remove the rubble.
An AFP video shows a group of men pulling debris from a house with their bare hands in search of a body.
The unrecognized Taliban government sought help from the international community and humanitarian organizations.
But the scenario is difficult, and since the Taliban returned to power, UN agencies are less present in the country than ever before.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres assured that the UN was “fully mobilized” to assist Afghanistan in the shipment of medicines and food.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) emphasized that the priority of the population is protection from rains and low temperatures.
The Taliban announced on Thursday that it had received two planes with the help of Iran and Qatar. Eight trucks carrying food and relief supplies from neighboring Pakistan also arrived in Paktika.
“Our country is poor and has few resources. This is a humanitarian crisis. It’s like a tsunami,” Mohammad Yahya Wiar, director of the hospital in Paktika’s capital, Sharan, told AFP.
Dozens of injured, including 55-year-old Bibi Hawa from Gayan neighborhood, who lost 15 relatives in the accident, were hospitalized.
“Seven people died in one room, five in another, three in another,” she said without holding back tears. “I am alone now, I have no one.”
Afghanistan experiences frequent earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, located at the confluence of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
The deadliest earthquake in Afghanistan’s recent history (5,000 dead) occurred in May 1998 in Takhar and Badakhshan provinces.
source: Noticias
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