One of the worst earthquakes in Afghanistan’s history struck the border region with Pakistan on Sunday, killing over 800 people and injuring at least 2,800 more.
The quake struck at 11:47 p.m. local time, centered about 17 miles northeast of the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province. According to the Taliban junta, most of the casualties occurred in neighboring Kunar province.
“Entire villages in Kunar province have been badly hit. And the government says emergency teams are being deployed from Kabul and nearby provinces. Officials here are pledging to use all available resources to rescue people and support affected families,” Al Jazeera News reported.
“Kunar is an impoverished and mountainous region. The houses there are very vulnerable, built of mud and rocks. So they would not be able to withstand this particular earthquake, given the fact that this was shallow. It also happened late in the night, when a lot of people were inside their homes,” noted Al Jazeera reporter Kamal Hyder.
“These villages are spread wide apart. Access is also very difficult, because such earthquakes would definitely have caused landslides. So whatever operation is going to be underway has to be within the critical hours to reach those remote locations. That will be the biggest challenge,” Hyder said.
A Kunar resident told the UK Guardian on Monday that ten of his own relatives, including five of his children, were killed by the quake.
“The poor people in this area have lost everything. There is death in every home, and beneath the rubble of each roof, there are dead bodies. The mud houses have been wiped away, and destruction is everywhere. People are desperately seeking help,” he said.
Geologists said the quake was broad and shallow, with only about five miles of depth. Shallow earthquakes usually cause the most damage. Taliban officials said three villages in Kunar province were wiped out, and many others were severely damaged. Of the documented fatalities so far, 610 were from Kunar, and 12 were from Nangarhar.
“The disaster is set to further stretch the resources of the war-torn nation’s Taliban administration, already grappling with humanitarian crises, from a sharp drop in aid to the pushback of hundreds of thousands of Afghans by neighboring countries,” Reuters predicted.
The Taliban regime immediately demanded international humanitarian aid for the earthquake victims — a call that will prove difficult to answer for many of the world’s major donor nations, including the United States, because of the Taliban’s monstrous human rights record and the regime’s penchant for stealing humanitarian assistance.
Only two weeks ago, the Taliban antagonized the civilized world with a splashy nationwide celebration of the fourth anniversary of its violent conquest of Afghanistan, including arrogant demands for the world to formally recognize the legitimacy of the regime. To date, only Russia has formally acknowledged the Taliban’s rule as legitimate.
Afghanistan has suffered three major earthquakes since the Taliban seized power, while humanitarian outlays to the impoverished nation have dwindled from $3.8 billion in 2022 to just $767 million this year. The quakes in 2022 killed over a thousand people, while the massive quake in Herat province in 2023 killed over 2,000.
The deadliest earthquakes in modern Afghan history were twin quakes in 1998, which killed at least 7,000 people between them. The strongest recorded quake was a magnitude 7.3 event in 1956, which had a relatively low casualty count because it struck a sparsely-populated area.
The quake on Sunday was powerful enough to be felt a considerable distance across the border in Pakistan, though Pakistani officials did not report any fatalities from the event. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday offered assistance to Afghanistan, along with his “heartfelt condolences and prayers to the bereaved families.”
The Taliban defense ministry said rescue teams were working to reach the remote mountainous areas where many of the deaths and injuries were reported. Foreign reporters saw helicopters and ambulances ferrying injured people from the disaster area. The defense ministry said on Monday that 420 wounded and dead had been evacuated with 40 flights so far.
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