The death toll from Sunday’s powerful magnitude-6.0 earthquake in eastern Afghanistan has risen sharply to over 2,200, making it the country’s deadliest quake in decades. The vast majority of casualties occurred in Kunar province, where 2,205 people were killed and 3,640 injured, according to a Taliban government toll. Rescue efforts are ongoing but severely hampered by limited access to the mountainous region, where repeated aftershocks have triggered rockfalls, blocking precarious roads and delaying critical aid from reaching the hardest-hit areas.
The disaster has placed an immense strain on the nation’s fragile infrastructure and healthcare system, which was already weakened by decades of conflict. The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that local hospitals are struggling with shortages of trauma supplies, medicine, and staff, appealing for $4 million to deliver lifesaving interventions. The crisis is further exacerbated by the loss of US foreign aid earlier this year, which has rapidly depleted the country’s emergency stockpiles and logistical resources.
On the ground, the situation is dire for survivors. Hundreds of villagers in the devastated Nurgal district remain stranded in the open, with multiple families sheltering under scraps of tarpaulin. A desperate fight broke out over a small delivery of food in one field, highlighting the severe lack of supplies. “Yesterday, some people brought some food, everyone flooded on them; people are starving, we haven’t had anything to eat for a long time,” one survivor told AFP.
The earthquake has created a crisis within a crisis for cash-strapped Afghanistan, which was already contending with endemic poverty, severe drought, and the forced return of millions of Afghans from Pakistan and Iran. Filippo Grandi, head of the UN’s refugee agency, stated the quake has affected more than 500,000 people. In a cruel twist, even as the region reels, Pakistan has continued its push to expel Afghans, with over 6,300 people crossing into the quake-hit Nangarhar province on Tuesday alone.
