KASHKAK: Rescue workers were digging Monday for families still trapped in the rubble of their ruined homes, two days after a series of earthquakes that killed more than 2,000 people in rural western Afghanistan. “People are trying to search and get their family out of debris,” disaster management ministry spokesman Mullah Janan Sayeq told a news conference in the capital, saying reports from the field described “a very bad situation”.
Volunteers in trucks packed with food, tents and blankets flocked to hard-to-reach areas 30 kilometers (19 miles) northwest of Herat city, capital of the same-named province, hit by a magnitude 6.3 quake Saturday and eight powerful aftershocks. They also brought shovels to help dig through the rubble of flattened villages as hope dwindled that anyone may still be buried alive. “Many people have come from far-flung districts to get people out from the rubble,” said Khalid, 32, at Kashkak in Zenda Jan district.
“Everyone is busy searching for bodies everywhere, we don’t know if there are others as well under the debris.” Local and national officials gave conflicting counts of the number of dead and injured, but the disaster ministry said Sunday that 2,053 people had died. “We can’t give exact numbers for dead and wounded as it is in flux,” Sayeq said Monday. Dust and despair Amir Hussain, a 33-year-old volunteer rescue worker who dug through the night in the hope of finding survivors, said they took out several dead bodies. “Three of them were little children.
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They had just came from their school, one of them was killed in the street and two others in their home," he said. Around him, men in dust-stained clothes hacked at the camel-colored earth — some still looking for bodies, others gouging out graves to bury the dead. One man, dazed with emotion, was led through a maze of burial pits that now pockmark the earth. The gravediggers paused to watch him pass, then got back to their work, mounding piles of earth over the dead. "We were told that the death toll has reached up to 170," said village rescue worker Maula Dad.
The World Health Organization said more than 11,000 people had been affected from 1,655 families, whilst the UN said “100 percent” of homes in 11 villages were totally destroyed. As winter draws in, providing shelter for residents will be a major challenge for Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which seized power in August 2021.
‘Crisis on top of crisis’
Taliban authorities have banned women from working for UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country, making assessments of family needs in deeply conservative parts of the country difficult. Save the Children called the quake “a crisis on top of a crisis”. “The scale of the damage is horrific. The numbers affected by this tragedy are truly disturbing,” said the group’s country director Arshad Malik.
In Sarboland village, an AFP reporter saw gutted homes, with personal belongings flapping in the wind as women and children camped out in the open. Most rural homes in Afghanistan are made of mud, built around wooden support poles, with little in the way of modern steel reinforcement. Multi-generational extended families generally live under the same roof, meaning disasters such as Saturday’s quake can devastate local communities.
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'There is nothing'
The Herat region is still grappling with a huge displaced population caused by two decades of war as well as a lingering years-long drought. And Afghanistan in general is suffering from a massive reduction in foreign aid since the Taliban's return to power in 2021. Nonetheless supplies gradually began to arrive on the scene of the hard-to-reach village including food, water, tents — and some coffins for the dead.
In one aid tent, stacks of flat Afghan bread were being handed out while Red Crescent trucks unloaded supplies nearby. Children meandered over blocks of mud-formed masonry, which were once simple homes, now turned inside-out with belongings such as backpacks, cookware, and toothbrushes out in the open. Along what was once the village's main throughfare, a man carried a child-sized bundle cradled in his arms, shrouded in a red fleece blanket. Nearby, a mother lamented her situation. "Everyone from our family is in the hospital. I haven't heard from them," said 40-year-old Fatima. "We are all finished; there is nothing." — AFP