Afghan quake survivors dig graves with pickaxes as entire households wiped out

By Sayed Hassib

KABUL/ MAZAR DARA, Afghanistan (Reuters) -Nasrullah Khan's voice breaks as he describes how with his own hands he buried three children in one grave and two young men in another after an earthquake struck the mountainous southeastern Afghan province of Kunar on Sunday.

Nasrullah, an office worker from Kunar City, travelled six hours into Dewagul Valley in Kunar after the quake to help rescue efforts.

"The first man I met had lost 18 members of his family," he said. "The injured and the dead were lying on the ground with no aid. In some villages, only two or three people survived in each household. It was the first time in my life I saw so many dead bodies."

"Entire households were gone."

In valleys lined with mud-brick homes, survivors carried bodies on woven stretchers. Nasrullah said he saw the bodies of children wrapped in patterned blankets and men digging graves with pickaxes.

Sunday's magnitude 6 quake killed some 1,400 people and injured 3,124, with more than 5,400 houses destroyed, according to a Taliban spokesperson.

On Tuesday, a second large quake shook the same region, leading to fears of yet more destruction in a country crippled by poverty, war and shrinking aid.

Officials said three villages in Kunar were flattened, causing more than 600 deaths. The defence ministry said 40 flights had evacuated 420 victims as rescue teams moved from badly hit villages to more remote hamlets.

Gul Bibi, an 80-year-old, was weeping, holding a toddler in her arms, next to a destroyed house in the mountain village of Mazar Dara, one of the places worst hit in Kunar province.

"I lost everything," Bibi said, saying her family was buried under the mud and debris of their home. "Just this grandson survived."

The United Nations has warned the toll would rise as victims remained trapped under the rubble.

In Dara-e-Noor, in the province of Nangarhar, 23-year-old Ziarat Gul said his uncle’s house collapsed, killing a seven-year-old boy and two girls.

"We pulled them out with our hands, but they were already gone." He and his family have been sleeping in open fields since the quake.

Nasrullah said he went to three villages and helped bury 41 bodies, but not all could be laid to rest. "We buried people quickly, before aftershocks forced us to run from the gravesites," he said.

(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Sayed Hassib in Mazar Dara, Kunar Province; ; Writing by Ariba Shahid, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)