Hope dwindles for survivors days after deadly Afghan quake

JALALABAD - Hope faded Wednesday of finding survivors in the rubble of homes devastated by the weekend's powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, as emergency services struggled to reach remote villages.

A magnitude-6.0 earthquake hit the mountainous region bordering Pakistan on Sunday, leaving residents huddled in the open air for fear of powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to pull people from under flattened buildings.

The earthquake killed more than 1,400 people and injured over 3,300, Taliban authorities said, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country.

The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces.

In Kunar's Nurgal district, victims remained trapped under the rubble and were difficult to rescue, local official Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad told AFP on Wednesday.

"There are some villages which have still not received aid," he said.

Landslides caused by the earthquake stymied access to already isolated villages.

The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of their aid teams "had to walk for 20 kilometres to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members".

The World Health Organization warned the number of casualties from the earthquake was expected to rise, "as many remain trapped in destroyed buildings".

'NORMALISE' SURVIVORS' LIVES

In two days, the Taliban government's defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate some 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals.

In the Mazar Dara village of Kunar, a small mobile clinic was deployed to provide emergency care to the injured, but no tents were set up to shelter survivors, an AFP correspondent said.

On Tuesday, a defence ministry commission said it had instructed "the relevant institutions to take measures in all areas to normalise the lives of the earthquake victims", without providing further details on the plans to do so.

Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat aid a camp had been set up in Khas Kunar district to coordinate emergency aid, while two other centres were opened near the epicentre "to oversee the transfer of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors".

According to the United Nations, hundreds of thousands of people could be affected by the disaster.

Multiple countries have pledged assistance, but NGOs and the UN have voiced alarm that funding shortfalls after massive aid cuts threaten the response in one of the poorest countries in the world.

After decades of conflict, Afghanistan is facing endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in the years since the Taliban takeover in 2021.

"This earthquake could not have come at a worse time," said Jagan Chapagain, IFRC Secretary General in a statement late Tuesday.

"The disaster not only brings immediate suffering but also deepens Afghanistan's already fragile humanitarian crisis."