Afghanistan earthquake kills 800, injures 2,800, Taliban asks world for help

By Charlotte Greenfield

KABUL (Reuters) -One of Afghanistan's worst earthquakes killed more than 800 people and injured at least 2,800, authorities said on Monday, as rescuers struggled to reach remote areas due to rough mountainous terrain and inclement weather.

The disaster will further stretch the resources of the war-torn nation's Taliban administration, already grappling with crises ranging from a sharp drop in foreign aid to deportations of hundreds of thousands of Afghans by neighbouring countries.

Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for the health ministry in Kabul, called for international aid to tackle the devastation wrought by the quake of magnitude 6 that struck around midnight local time, at a depth of 10 km (6 miles).

"We need it because here lots of people lost their lives and houses," he told Reuters.

The quake killed 812 people in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar, administration spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

Ziaul Haq Mohammadi, a student at Al-Falah University in the eastern city of Jalalabad, was studying in his room at home when the quake struck. He said he tried to stand up but was knocked over by the power of the tremor.

"We spent the whole night in fear and anxiety because at any moment another earthquake could happen," Mohammadi said.

Rescuers were battling to reach remote mountainous areas cut off from mobile networks along the Pakistani border, where mudbrick homes dotting the slopes collapsed in the quake.

"The area of the earthquake was affected by heavy rain in the last 24-48 hours as well, so the risk of landslides and rock slides is also quite significant - that is why many of the roads are impassable," Kate Carey, an officer at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told Reuters.

Rescue teams and authorities are trying to dispose of animal carcasses quickly so as to minimise the risk of contamination to water resources, Carey said.

Casualties could rise as rescue teams access more isolated

locations, authorities said.

"All our ... teams have been mobilised to accelerate assistance, so that comprehensive and full support can be provided," said health ministry spokesperson Abdul Maten Qanee, citing efforts in areas from security to food and health.

Reuters Television images showed helicopters ferrying out the affected, while residents helped security forces and medics carry the wounded to ambulances in an area with a long history of earthquakes and floods.

Military rescue teams fanned out across the region, the defence ministry said in a statement, with 40 flights carrying away 420 wounded and dead.

The quake razed three villages in Kunar, with substantial damage in many others, authorities said. At least 610 people were killed in Kunar with 12 dead in Nangarhar, they added.

It was Afghanistan's third major deadly quake since the Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew, triggering a cut to the international funding that formed the bulk of government finances.

Diplomats and aid officials say crises elsewhere in the world, along with donor frustration over the Taliban's policies towards women, including curbs on those who are aid workers, have spurred the cuts in funding.

Even humanitarian aid, aimed at bypassing political institutions to serve urgent needs, has shrunk to $767 million this year, down from $3.8 billion in 2022.

APPEALS FOR FUNDING

Humanitarian agencies say they are fighting a forgotten crisis in Afghanistan, where the United Nations estimates more than half the population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

"So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work," a spokesperson of Afghanistan's foreign office said on Monday.

Later, a spokesperson for China's foreign ministry said it was ready to provide disaster relief assistance "according to Afghanistan's needs and within its capacity".

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar of India said it had delivered 1,000 family tents to Kabul and was moving 15 tonnes of food material to Kunar, with more relief material to be sent from India starting Tuesday.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said its mission in Afghanistan was preparing to help those in areas devastated by the quake. Pope Leo also sent condolences for the dead.

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake that killed 1,000 people in the eastern region in 2022 was the first major natural disaster faced by the Taliban government.

Humanitarian officials and locals say almost two years after a powerful tremor hit the western city of Herat, many villages are still recovering and living in temporary structures.

Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.

Quakes in Afghanistan tend to be so deadly because of building construction that is often vulnerable to shaking, and the number of people living in the Hindu Kush, said Richard Walker, professor of tectonics at the University of Oxford.

(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul, Saeed Shah and Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad, Mrinmay Dey and Hritam Mukherjee; writing by Ariba Shahid, Sudipto Ganguly and Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Heinrich)