Afghanistan earthquake: locals mourn the dead and seek shelter

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SALAYSHA, Afghanistan – Men lifted corpses from under the rubble, carefully wrapped them in blankets, and then carried them to their humble graves: long trenches dug with farming equipment.

There were over 30 bodies they needed to bury, too many for individual plots.

“My family is here,” said Rahmatullah Rahimi, who lost his wife and six children when his house collapsed. He pointed to a row of dirt mounds strewn with rough stones. “There was no time for a funeral for everyone,” he said. “We buried them all at once.”

A day after a massive earthquake hits this remote part of eastern Afghanistan, destroying hundreds of simply-built buildings and wiping out entire villages, weary residents are digging their hands into what were once their homes, while the country’s new rulers grapple with the heels of one of the country’s most Natural disasters have been deadly for decades.

A search and rescue team assisted villagers in southeast Kabul on June 23 after an earthquake killed more than 1,000 and injured more than 1,600 on June 22. (Video: Reuters)

On Thursday, the Taliban government issued new appeals for international aid and called on the Biden administration to release Afghan assets held in US banks. Despite capturing and taking power in Kabul in August, the Taliban have been unable to obtain billions of dollars in funds due to US sanctions.

Even as they struggled to assess the damage, Afghan officials and international aid organizations said the situation was dire. As of Thursday morning, the death toll was around 1,000, and more than 1,600 wounded.

Many of the wounded in Paktika and Khost provinces – a rugged mountainous region on the border with Pakistan – have been taken to hospitals while some seriously injured, Mohammad Naseem Haqqani, a spokesman for the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority, told The Washington Post. They were flown to the capital, Kabul.

Haqqani added that it is still impossible to take into account the number of collapsed houses. But regardless of the dead and injured, the earthquake displaced countless residents and exposed them to torrential rains, exacerbating misery in a war-torn region and severe economic crisis.

In some of the worst affected villages, entire homes were reduced to rubble. Most of the houses in this area are built of mud bricks, which were dismantled by the earthquake. The gardens were jammed with dusty pillows, clothes, and rugs. A handful of homes look as if the walls have been shaved off, revealing an intimate interior: stacks of cooking utensils, a smashed bathroom mirror, bright hanging curtains skewed.

The 5.9-magnitude earthquake, which was so powerful that it was felt hundreds of miles away in India and Iran, poses a challenge to both the Taliban government and the international community. Since the US withdrawal and the Taliban’s seizure of power last year, the group has implemented ultra-conservative social policies and restricted the rights of Afghan women, deepening its international isolation and leaving it cut off from most of the foreign aid that has kept the country on its feet.

Afghans go hungry while US and Taliban officials blame each other

Now, the question is whether foreign governments who have been loath to do business with the group will step in to help.

So far, Biden administration officials have said they are monitoring the situation and assessing how best to help. The US embassy in Kabul said the US was “working with partners to deploy medical teams to provide immediate care to affected people, to dispatch assessment teams, and to maintain stockpiles of shelter and relief supplies in the area to support initial response efforts.” on Twitter on Thursday, indicating that she will not be directly involved. “US aid funding flows directly to the United Nations and carefully selected, experienced international partners who provide vital assistance to the people of Afghanistan.”

Some of Afghanistan’s neighbors have already sent aid. On Thursday, Pakistan said it would send eight trucks loaded with tents, blankets and medicine across the border, while Iran and Qatar sent three planes full of supplies, according to Taliban officials.

The Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhonzadeh, called on “the international community and social and humanitarian welfare organizations to come forward and provide assistance to those affected by the earthquake in Afghanistan.”

“Whatever help you can provide at this critical moment,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, on the ground, families in devastated villages spoke of their exhaustion with the immediate task of digging up rubble for their loved ones – or finding a dry place to sleep.

At a hospital in Oregon, a woman named Pastikhila from Barmal remembers escaping from under her fallen roof early Wednesday morning after she and her husband were awakened by earthquakes.

Baskhila grabbed one of her daughters and nephew as she ran away from home, but her other two children did not escape in time. “It happened so quickly that I couldn’t save all my children,” she said.

When the shaking stopped, I started digging. An hour later, her children’s cries had faded. I continued digging for another eight hours until I reached their bodies.

“When they stopped screaming, I knew they were dead,” she said as she sat in the exhausted hospital as she pleaded with doctors for more sedatives. “I just want to sleep,” she said weakly.

There is little hope here of finding survivors. The World Food Program said on Thursday that 70 percent of homes in Barmal were completely destroyed.

Similar scenes of misery emerged across the stricken area at dawn on Thursday, after a night of rain that washed away roads, hampered rescue efforts and inundated the newly displaced.

In the Gyan Paktika district, Yassin, a doctor and former member of the provincial council, said he slept in the rain without food or shelter. He estimated that about 1,100 families spent the night exposed, adding that some charities and government representatives had promised tents and first aid but had not yet begun distributing them.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said on Thursday it was “sending” emergency shelters from its warehouses in Kabul for distribution.

In many of the hardest-hit areas, Taliban leaders deployed to survey the damage, deliver food, and mobilize residents’ morale – with mixed results. Near a dirt field in eastern Paktika, where Taliban officials pounced in several helicopters, raising a cloud of dust, residents spoke of the urgent need for shelter.

Taliban leaders distributed bread to a crowd of men and boys, but only a few miles away in the village of Didi Qala, where 45 people were killed and nearly every home was irreparably damaged, families did not do so, Mir Zakan, the local elder, said. I don’t want food handouts.

“One piece of bread only for a day, so what do we do with it?” Asked.

“We need tents and money to rebuild,” he said, echoing villagers’ fears that their earthquake-ravaged homes could collapse completely.

He said more than 80 families now live and sleep in the open. Some have temporary tents, but the fabric provides little more than basic privacy and doesn’t offer protection.

“When it rains,” he said, “the children shiver.” “But there is nothing we can do.”

Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Shih from New Delhi. Shaiq Hussain from Islamabad contributed to this report.

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