Article author:
Associated Press
Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghanistan, Associated Press — The number of deaths from a catastrophic earthquake in Afghanistan is a few days after the brick and stone houses turned into rubble. Continued to increase. According to the latest figures published in state media on Friday, 1,150 people were killed and more were injured.
A country of 38 million people is in the midst of a swirling economic crisis, with millions already in poverty and more than one million children at risk of severe malnutrition. It was in.
Thousands of people have lost their shelters in the magnitude 6 earthquake. State media reported that the earthquake on Wednesday destroyed or severely damaged nearly 3,000 homes.
Local Red Crescent and aid organizations such as the World Food Program are the most vulnerable with food and other urgent needs in Paktika, the epicenter of Paktika. Intervened to support a good family. The earthquake, and the neighboring Khost province.
Still, the inhabitants seemed to be primarily themselves to deal with the aftermath, as their new Taliban-led government and international aid community struggled to bring help. Villagers are looking for survivors, burying the dead and digging rubble by hand.
The Taliban, director of the state-owned Bakhtar News Agency, said Friday that the death toll had increased to 1,150 from previous reports of 1,000 deaths. Abdul Wahid Rayan said at least 1,600 people were injured.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has killed 770 people.
Given the difficulty of accessing and communicating with the affected villages, it is not clear how the death toll has been reached. Both severe casualties will make earthquake Afghanistan the most deadly in 20 years.
In the Gayan district, at least 1,000 homes were damaged by the earthquake. Another 800 homes in the Spera district of Khost were also damaged. Modern buildings can withstand magnitude 6 earthquakes elsewhere, but mudbrick houses and landslide-prone mountains in Afghanistan make such earthquakes more dangerous.
On Thursday, AP news journalists spent hours in villages in the Gayan district, spending the previous rainy night on collapsed open-roofed lifted timber, pulling stones apart by hand, and whereabouts. A family loved one who was looking for an unknown person. Taliban fighters patrolled vehicles in the area, but only a few helped dig up the rubble.
There were few signs of heavy equipment and only one bulldozer was in transit. Ambulances circulated, but other help to life was largely unclear.
Many international aid agencies withdrew from Afghanistan when the Taliban seized power last August. The remaining people are struggling to get medicines, food and tents in the distant earthquake-stricken areas, using the rough mountain roads that have been exacerbated by damage and rain. UN agencies are also facing a $ 3 billion shortage of funds for Afghanistan this year.
Germany, Norway and several other countries have announced that they are sending aid to the earthquake, but will only work through UN agencies, not the Taliban, which the government has not yet officially acknowledged. Was emphasized.
Food and other necessities trucks arrived from Pakistan, and humanitarian-filled planes landed from Iran and Qatar. A humanitarian aid team in India and a technical team to the capital Kabul will coordinate the provision of humanitarian aid. India states that its aid will be handed over to UN agencies on the ground and the Afghan Red Crescent Societies.
In Paktika, an earthquake struck a seriously poor area. It is home to a few fertile areas surrounded by rugged mountains. The roads are so difficult that it is only 175 km (110 miles) from Kabul, but it took a day in some villages in the Gayan district.
Gayan's 6-year-old boy cried as he said. His parents, two sisters and one brother were all dead. He escaped from the ruins of his house and evacuated with his neighbor.