Over 1,400 people have been killed and at least 3,250 others injured after an earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society.
The quake hit the country’s rugged northeastern province of Kunar, near the Pakistan border, at roughly midnight on Sunday, destroying several villages, officials said.
Rescuers were trying to reach isolated villages in the mountainous province where the quake hit, with the provincial head of disaster management, Ehsanullah Ehsan, saying: “We cannot accurately predict how many bodies might still be trapped under the rubble. Our effort is to complete these operations as soon as possible and to begin distributing aid to the affected families.”
Here’s what we know so far.
Number of casualties high and area difficult to access, officials say
Sharafat Zaman, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s ministry of public health, said: “Rescue operations are still underway there, and several villages have been completely destroyed.
“The figures for martyrs and injured are changing. Medical teams from Kunar, Nangarhar and the capital Kabul have arrived in the area.”
He said many areas have not been able to report casualty figures and “numbers were expected to change” as deaths and injuries are reported.
Thousands of children were at risk in the aftermath of the quake, the United Nations Children’s Fund warned on Tuesday.
UNICEF said it was sending medicines, warm clothing, tents and tarpaulins for shelter, as well as hygiene items such as soap, detergent, towels, sanitary pads and water buckets.
Taliban soldiers were also deployed to the area to provide help and security, the government said.
Rescue teams and authorities were trying to dispose of animal carcasses quickly to minimise the risk of contamination to water resources, a UN official said.
“Damaged roads, ongoing aftershocks, and remote locations of many villages severely impede the delivery of aid,” the World Health Organisation said. It added that over 12,000 people had been affected by the quake.
“The pre-earthquake fragility of the health system means local capacity is overwhelmed, creating total dependence on external actors,” it said.
The large red circle shows the earthquake near Kabul. Pic: German Research Centre for Geosciences
According to earlier reports, 30 people were killed in a single village, the health ministry said.
“The number of casualties and injuries is high, but since the area is difficult to access, our teams are still on site,” said health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman.
The Afghan Red Crescent said its officials and medical teams “rushed to the affected areas and are currently providing emergency assistance to impacted families”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘Multiplicity of crises’ for Afghans
The impact of aid cuts
Afghanistan has been badly affected by Donald Trump’s decision in January to cut funding to USAID and reduce funding for other foreign aid programmes.
The UK has allocated £1m to support the UN and the International Red Cross in delivering critical healthcare and emergency supplies to affected Afghans.
China has said it is ready to provide disaster relief, while India delivered 1,000 family tents to Kabul and was moving 15 tonnes of food supplies to Kunar.
An impoverished country where quakes are always a threat
Earthquakes represent a constant danger in Afghanistan, a country that sits across three geological faultlines.
But the people of this impoverished nation are also vulnerable in a number of other ways.
Since the Taliban regained control in 2021, the international community has withdrawn much of the financial support, which formed the bulk of government spending in Afghanistan.
Even humanitarian aid, which generally bypasses government institutions, has shrunk substantially – from $3.8bn (£2.8bn) in 2022 to $767m (£566m) this year.
The US government, through its international development arm USAID, provided 45% of all assistance granted to Afghanistan last year, but those sums have been slashed by the Trump administration.
The UK, along with France, Germany, Sweden, and others, has also made deep cuts to humanitarian aid.
As a consequence, hundreds of hospitals and local health clinics in the country have been shut this year and related medical posts have been lost.
This funding crisis comes as the country tries to absorb millions of people who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took power.
More than two million in fact, have come back this year, with Pakistan and Iran taking measures to force their return.
On arrival, they discover a country where more than half the population requires urgent humanitarian assistance, according to the UN, with millions suffering from acute food insecurity.
Large parts of northern Afghanistan are suffering a lengthy drought.
Destructive earthquakes are an unfortunate fact of life in the country.
This most recent rupture near the city of Jalalabad represents the third major quake in the past four years.
But the catastrophe is compounded in a nation that ranks as one of the poorest – and most desperate – on Earth.
What happened?
A 6.0 quake hit Kunar at around 11.47pm local time (8.17pm UK time) on Sunday.
The quake’s epicentre was near Jalalabad, Nangarhar province, at a depth of just five miles (8km). Shallower quakes such as these tend to cause more damage.
Jalalabad is situated about 74 miles (119km) from Kabul. It is considered a remote and mountainous area.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Afghanistan particularly vulnerable to earthquakes – expert
A second earthquake struck in the same province about 20 minutes later, with a magnitude of 4.5 and a depth of 6.2 miles (10km). This was later followed by a 5.2 earthquake at the same depth.
Homes of mud and stone were levelled by the quake, with deaths and injuries reported in the districts of Nur Gul, Soki, Watpur, Manogi and Chapadare, according to the Kunar Disaster Management Authority.
Ambulances prepare to receive victims of an earthquake. Pic: Nangarhar Media Centre/AP
The first quake hit 17 miles east-northeast of the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, the US Geological Survey said. Jalalabad is a bustling trade city due to its proximity to a key border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It has a population of around 300,000 people, according to the municipality, but its metropolitan area is believed to be much larger.
Most of its buildings are low-rise constructions predominantly made from concrete and brick, though its outer areas include homes built of mud bricks and wood.
People carry an earthquake victim on a stretcher to an ambulance at an airport in Jalalabad. Pic: Reuters
Quake measures slightly lower than the country’s deadliest disaster
Afghanistan is prone to earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
The country is also one of the world’s poorest, having suffered decades of conflict, with poor infrastructure leaving it particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.
A magnitude 6.3 earthquake and strong aftershocks struck Afghanistan on 7 October 2023.
Afghans donate blood for quake victims. Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health/AP
The country’s Taliban government said at least 4,000 people had been killed, but the United Nations said the number of people killed was around 1,500.
The 2023 earthquake is considered the deadliest natural disaster to hit Afghanistan in recent memory.
A series of other earthquakes in the country’s west killed more than 1,000 people last year.
Humanitarian officials and locals said many villages are still recovering and living in temporary structures after the previous disasters.
Aid distribution. Pic: Bakhtar News Agency
Disaster adds to ‘perfect storm of problems’ for Afghanistan
The earthquake is a “perfect storm” in a country that is already suffering a “multiplicity of crises,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has told Sky News.
Filippo Grandi said the situation in the country was “very tragic” and added: “We have very little information as of yet, but already, reports of hundreds of people killed and many more made homeless.”
Afghanistan already has finite resources, as it is one of the world’s poorest countries and is also war-torn, having been taken over by the Taliban in 2021 when foreign forces withdrew after years of fighting.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
The withdrawal triggered a cut to the international funding that formed the bulk of government finances in Afghanistan.
Humanitarian aid, aimed at bypassing political institutions to serve urgent needs, has shrunk to $767m (£567m) this year, down from $3.8bn (£2.08bn) in 2022, according to Reuters, yet the United Nations estimates more than half the population is in urgent need of aid.
Mr Grandi said Afghanistan is also suffering from a “big drought”, while Iran has “sent back almost 2 million people” and Pakistan “threatens to do the same”.
“It’s extremely difficult to mobilise resources because of the Taliban. So it’s a perfect storm,” he added. “And this earthquake, likely to have been quite devastating, is going to just add to the misery.”
He appealed to “all those who can help to please do that”.
Emergency relief hampered by lack of women’s rights, charity warns
Diplomats and aid officials say crises elsewhere in the world, along with donor frustration over the Taliban’s policies towards women, have spurred the cuts in funding.
Oxfam’s chief executive Halima Begum told Sky News: “Emergency relief in Afghanistan, either over the long term or even during this emergency, is a really difficult process because women’s rights are not upheld very well in this country.”
She said providing aid “presents a very difficult and complex challenge for us” and the charity had to pull out of the country “for reasons to do with operational difficulty”.
Oxfam is working through partner agencies such as the British Red Cross, “trying to figure out how best we can get support to what you can see are very difficult, mountainous regions”, she said.
She added: “All of the NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and charities will be getting together, figuring out who is present there.
“And of course, there’s an ongoing conversation and monitoring with the Disasters Emergency Committee to just see where the death toll goes and what that response level should be.”
“So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work,” a spokesperson of Afghanistan’s foreign office said.
A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said the country was ready to provide disaster relief assistance “according to Afghanistan’s needs and within its capacity”.
In a post on X, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said its mission in Afghanistan was preparing to help those in areas devastated by the quake.
