Death toll likely to rise in Afghanistan earthquake as Taliban seeks help for country that was ‘already on the brink’

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers demanded all the international aid they could get Thursday after the catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 1,000 people in the country’s mountainous east. Wednesday’s earthquake was the deadliest to hit the country in two decades.

As CBS News’ chief foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata reports, organized rows of men were preparing rows of graves for victims in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province. The hard work stands in stark contrast to the massive effort of the day before, when rescuers were forced to dig with their bare hands in a desperate search for survivors.

The poor infrastructure, and the lack of roads leading to the remote area, led to the transportation of many of the wounded by helicopter. At least 1,500 people were injured, and many left fighting to save their lives.

Afghan men and a child stand near the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Ghayan village, Paktika province, Afghanistan, June 23, 2022. Ibrahim Norouzi/Associated Press

“There was gurgling and the bed started shaking” when the quake struck at around 1:30 am on Wednesday while people were sleeping in villages across the area, witness Shabeer said. “I’m sure seven or nine people in my family, who were in the same room as me, died.”

Speaking to CBS News by phone on Wednesday, 28-year-old Juma Khan, who lives in the Jayan district of Paktika, which has seen some of the worst damage, said he “wake up too” around 1:30 a.m. and quickly realized it . It was an earthquake.

“I’ve never felt such an earthquake in my entire life,” he told CBS News. “I jumped out of my room and ran into my brother’s room. I collapsed on them, and found his wife dead while my brother and his three children were injured under the rubble. It took eight hours to get them out of the rubble.”

“Most of the houses in our village collapsed, and dozens were killed and dozens injured as a result of the impact,” Khan said. “People are digging around the rubble with their hands to find those who are still hopelessly alive. Helicopters of the Taliban government are transporting some seriously wounded, but the Taliban do not have the resources and equipment to conduct an effective search and rescue mission.”

Taliban officials and residents inspect damage to homes in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika province after a major earthquake on June 22, 2022, in a photo taken by the Afghan government’s Bakhtar News Agency. Bakhtar News Agency

As D’Agata reported, the earthquake hit one of the poorest regions in one of the poorest countries on the planet.

Decades of conflict, government corruption, and sanctions now paralyze the Taliban regime have brought Afghanistan to its knees and left the Islamic government begging the international community for help.

Many aid groups fled the country after the Taliban regained control in August 2021.

“It’s a country already on edge,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Even before the earthquake, he said, Afghanistan was in a “famine-like situation. So, people are really really clinging to a thread.”

With the death toll rising, for the thousands of survivors left homeless by the earthquake and now facing the imminent threat of starvation, the suffering is just beginning.

Afghanistan: the new reality More

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