Afghanistan earthquake survivors dig with their own hands as aid delays | earthquake news

Officials said authorities in Afghanistan are struggling to reach a remote area hit by an earthquake that killed at least 1,000 people, as poor communications and a lack of adequate roads hampered their efforts.

“We can’t access the area, the networks are very weak, we are trying to get the latest updates,” Mohammad Ismail Muawiya, a spokesman for the Taliban’s military commander in the hardest-hit Paktika province, told Reuters news agency on Thursday.

Survivors escaped digging into villages reduced to rubble by a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck early Wednesday about 160 kilometers (100 miles) southeast of Kabul, in arid mountains dotted with small settlements near the border with Pakistan.

It was the deadliest earthquake in Afghanistan in 20 years and officials said the death toll could rise. An estimated 1,500 others have been reported injured.

(Al Jazeera)

Health Ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman told Reuters that about 1,000 people had been rescued from various affected areas by Thursday morning.

He said, “The aid has arrived in the area and is continuing, but more is needed.”

Access to the affected eastern provinces of Khost and Paktika has been hampered by roadblocks due to the earthquake as well as previous landslides caused by recent heavy rains.

In the hard-hit Jayan district of Paktika, villagers stood on top of a mound of mud bricks that were once a home. Others walked cautiously through dirt alleys, clutching the damaged walls with exposed wooden beams to make their way.

Atiqullah Bahram, a resident of Paktika state, told Al Jazeera that more than 30 villages were completely destroyed in Jayan.

I have visited some families who have lost all but a child or an elder. There were six or seven families who lost all of their members.”

Helicopters were used to reach the wounded and deliver urgent medical supplies and food. The authorities confirmed the destruction of 1,800 homes.

The survivors quickly prepared the area’s dead, including children and infants, for burial.

“We are asking the Islamic Emirate and all the countries to come forward and help us,” one of the survivors, who gave his name as Hakimullah, told The Associated Press. “We are nothing and have nothing, not even a tent to live in.”

Sultan Mahmud, head of Sabra district in Khost province, told Al Jazeera that 29 people were killed in the area, 42 were injured, 500 homes were destroyed, and the remote village of Afghan-Dubai was the worst affected.

Khost province is home to thousands of Afghan internally displaced persons, returnees and refugees from Waziristan who have already been displaced.

The head of the region, Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, said that the earthquake destroyed about 500 houses in separate areas of the region. [Sardar Shafaq/Anadolu Agency]

The Taliban government appealed for international aid. Most aid agencies have pulled out of the country and many governments have imposed sanctions on Afghanistan’s banking sector and cut billions of dollars in aid after the Taliban took control in August last year.

“Entire villages have been razed to the ground,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said in a press conference.

“Despite the sanctions imposed by the international community, the government did everything in its power, and the Afghan Red Crescent immediately sent emergency aid to the area, along with the Turkish Red Crescent and other agencies,” Balkhi said. .

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter that eight trucks of food and other necessities from Pakistan had arrived in Paktika. He also said on Thursday that two planes of humanitarian aid from Iran and one from Qatar had arrived in the country.

Neil Turner, the country director of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan, said in a statement that the Taliban authorities have granted humanitarian agencies full access to the affected areas.

However, according to Ramiz Alakbarov, deputy special representative of the United Nations in Afghanistan, the Taliban has not formally asked the United Nations to mobilize international search and rescue teams or obtain equipment from neighboring countries.

Many international aid agencies fear dealing directly with the Taliban because of sweeping international sanctions, while others have left Afghanistan completely after the Taliban seized power last August.

Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Latifi, from Paktika state, said WFP trucks could be seen heading to the affected areas as well as convoys from other international organizations, but bad weather conditions on Wednesday prevented much aid from arriving. The people are in need of.

At a regional hospital, seriously injured patients were turned away. “Paktika Regional Hospital still lacks very important resources,” Latifi said. “For example, they don’t have a helicopter, so patients have to be sent to Kabul by road,” a trip that takes an average of five hours.

On Wednesday, the United States expressed regret and said it would look for ways to help, including through possible talks with the Taliban government.

“president [Joe] National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden is monitoring developments and has directed the US Agency for International Development and other federal government partners to evaluate US response options to help those most affected.

The death toll reported as of Thursday was equal to the death toll from the 2002 earthquake in northern Afghanistan. It is the deadliest since 1998, when a 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in the remote northeastern region killed at least 4,500 people.

Farooq Jan Mangal contributed reporting from Khost, Afghanistan.

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