The earthquake of magnitude 6 that hit East of East Afghanistan left more than 1,400 dead and more than 3,100 injured, according to an official evaluation updated on Tuesday, September 2, one of the heaviest decades in the country, among the poorest in the world.
Around midnight on Sunday, this earthquake had thousands of houses in the remote villages of the mountainous provinces of Nangarhar, Kounar and Laghman.
Almost all victims (1,411 dead, 3,124 wounds) were identified in the province of Kounar, where, as in other places, rescuers continue to seek in the debris, while caregivers are working to comfort those who have now lost everything.
“The number of affected people could reach almost hundreds of thousands”
Rahmatullah Khaksar, emergency director at a Jalalabad hospital, the main city of the province of Nangarhar, said he had received 600 injured since Sunday night.
“Most patients are treated in trauma, wounded in the head, back, abdomen and legs,” he told AFP. “For those who are close, we have made part of the hospital available to stay there until they find their families.”
In Geneva, Indrika Matwatte, coordinator of the UN Humanitarian Action in Afghanistan, warned that “potentially, the number of people affected could reach almost hundreds of thousands” in a country where, after four decades of war, 85% of the inhabitants already live with less than one dollar per day, according to the UN.
According to the head of the Kounar Disaster Management Authority, Ehsanullah Ehsan, “research has not stopped” and this “thanks to the mobilization of our employees and residents of the surrounding districts.”
“The priority is to help the injured, then we will distribute campaign stores and hot meals to the homeless,” he told AFP, while helping to fight to reach certain cutting villages in the world for landslides.
“There are only stones”
In fact, for more than 36 hours, dozens of inhabitants of the villages of Wadir and Mazar Dara, on the green slopes of Kounar, clearer in the shovel or hand what remains of the collapsed houses.
Oubadullah Stagan hastened Wadir in his town on the edge of Pakistan, more east, to get news from his relatives.
“Here, people are poor, it is our duty to help them,” said AFP this 26 -year -old Afghan, he himself brutally out of sleep for the earthquake, but whose village has not been played.
In Wadir, on the other hand, “only stones remain, I don’t even know how to describe this, it is very difficult to see,” he releases, his tied throat.
Military helicopters continue their ballet to disaster areas, transporting help and evacuating dead and wounded.
Five million dollars in help
The epicenter of the earthquake was located 27 km from Jalalabad, just eight kilometers deep, which explains the heavy evaluation and the reach of the damage.
Afghanistan, whose Taliban authorities are only recognized by Moscow, suffers from recent cuts in international and American humanitarian aid.
Before Kounar’s disaster, UN agencies have launched call campaigns and have already released five million dollars from the UN World Emergency Fund. London, on the other hand, announced a million pounds to help support affected families.
Afghanistan is frequently beaten by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kouch mountain range, near the crossing of Euroasian and Indian tectonic plates.
Since 1900, the northeast of this country has experienced 12 earthquakes of a magnitude greater than 7, according to Brian Baptie, a seismologist of the British Geological Service.
After their return to power in 2021, the Taliban faced the most fatal earthquake in 25 years: in 2023, in the Hérat region, at the other end of Afghanistan, on the border with Iran, more than 1,500 people had been killed and more than 63,000 destroyed homes.
Source: BFM TV
