At least 1,000 killed in Afghanistan after powerful earthquake

An earthquake in the east of Afghanistan has killed 1,000 people and injured hundreds more, the country’s state-run news agency said.

The state-run Bakhtar News Agency said an additional 1,500 were injured and that the death toll could rise further.

Rescue efforts are likely to be complicated since many international aid agencies left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country last year and the chaotic withdrawal of the US military from the longest war in its history.

[ Isolated Afghanistan could struggle for aid after earthquake ]

Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6.1 earthquake near the Pakistani border, but quakes of that strength can cause severe damage in an area where homes and other buildings are poorly constructed and landslides are common.

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Experts put the depth at just six miles — another factor that could increase the impact.

Neighbouring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department said the quake’s epicentre was in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, some 50km southwest of the city of Khost. Buildings were also damaged in Khost province, and tremors were felt as far away as the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

Footage from Paktika showed men carrying people in blankets to waiting helicopters. Others were treated on the ground. One resident could be seen receiving IV fluids while sitting in a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home and still more were sprawled on stretchers.

In just one district of Khost province, the earthquake killed at least 25 people and injured over 95 others, local officials said.

Some images showed residents picking through clay bricks and other rubble from destroyed stone houses, some of whose roofs or walls had caved in.

An unknown number of people remained stuck under rubble and in outlying areas, health and aid workers said, and rescue operations were complicated by difficult conditions including heavy rains, landslides and many villages being nestled in inaccessible hillside areas.

“Many people are still buried under the soil. The rescue teams of the Islamic Emirate have arrived and with the help of local people are trying to take out the dead and injured,” a health worker at a hospital in the Paktika province said, asking for anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media.

The death toll makes it the deadliest quake since 2002, when a 6.1 magnitude quake killed about 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan immediately after the US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban government.

In Kabul, prime minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund convened an emergency meeting at the presidential palace to co-ordinate the relief effort, and Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, wrote on Twitter to urge aid agencies to send teams to the area.

After the Taliban swept across the country in 2021, the US military and its allies fell back to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport and later withdrew completely. Many international humanitarian organisations followed suit because of concerns about security and the Taliban’s poor human rights record.

In the time since, the Taliban has worked with Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on restarting airport operations in Kabul and across the country — but nearly all international carriers still avoid the country, and reluctance on the part of aid organisations to put any money in the Taliban’s coffers could make it difficult to fly in supplies and equipment.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif, in a statement offered his condolences over the earthquake, saying his nation will provide help.

US president Joe Biden directed the US Agency for International Development and other federal government partners to assess US response options, the White House said.

UN secretary general António Guterres said the United Nations was fully mobilised, assessing the needs and providing initial support.

“We count on the international community to help support the hundreds of families hit by this latest disaster. Now is the time for solidarity,” he said in a statement.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis offered prayers for all those killed and injured and for the “suffering of the dear Afghan population”.

Some remote areas of Pakistan saw reports of damage to homes near the Afghan border, but it was not immediately clear if that was due to rain or the earthquake, said Taimoor Khan, a disaster management spokesman in the area.

The European seismological agency, EMSC, said the earthquake’s tremors were felt over 310 miles away by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. — Agencies