Rescuers scaled back operations in Afghanistan’s devastated northwest yesterday as chances of finding survivors diminished 72 hours after one of the world’s deadliest earthquakes, while villagers in the area held mass funerals for their dead.
At least 2,400 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured, the Taliban-run government said, in the multiple earthquakes that struck northwest of the city of Herat, levelling thousands of homes.
Most of the casualties were women and children, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
Relief and rescue efforts have been hampered by crumbling infrastructure after decades of war, while a dearth of foreign aid, which once formed the backbone of the economy, has dried up since the Taliban took over.
“The operation is almost done,” spokesman for the disaster management ministry Janan Sayeeq told Reuters, adding that rescue efforts were continuing in some villages.
Yesterday the UN Humanitarian Office put the toll from the quakes at 1,294 deaths and 1,688 injuries, with 485 people missing.
However, it added that these figures were from the Zinda Jan district alone, and four other districts had also been hit, where assessments are continuing.
Sayeeq said a final casualty toll would be released soon.
Hemmed in by mountains, Afghanistan has a history of strong earthquakes, many in the rugged Hindu Kush region bordering Pakistan.
Saturday’s temblors – with a 6.3 magnitude – were one of the deadliest in the world this year, after the quakes in Turkiye and Syria which killed around 50,000 people.
The earthquakes flattened buildings in some 20 villages in the northwest, Afghan officials said.
The UN report said that “100%” of homes had been destroyed in Zinda Jan, along with six schools.
Siah Aab, one of the villages in the district, lost at least 300 residents, locals said.
Funeral prayers were held for the dead before they were buried, wrapped in blankets, in freshly dug graves.
“I have lost my four daughters-in-law, my four sons and my grandchildren,” villager Taj Mohamed, 60, said.
He said 11 of his family members had been killed in the disaster.
Zareen, in the village of Nayeb Rafi, where 11 of his family members were killed in the crush of falling masonry, said aid tents would not withstand the winter storms.
“If the government doesn’t take us away or help us, we will be stuck here,” the man in his 70s told AFP.
“Not a single house is left, not even a room where we could stay at night,” said 40-year-old Mohamed Naeem, who told AFP that he lost 12 relatives including his mother. “We can’t live here anymore. You can see, our family got martyred here. How could we live here?”
The UN Humanitarian Office has announced $5mn worth of assistance for the quake response, but immediate material support has come from just a few countries.
Afghanistan’s healthcare system, largely reliant on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and much international assistance was halted.
In addition to medical and food aid, survivors are in dire need of shelter as temperatures drop, the head of the WHO’s emergency response said.
Abdul Sattar, a grave digger in Siah Aab, said the living needed as much support as they can get.
“Their first hope is God, followed by help from other countries,” he said, adding that he and others had already dug more than 500 graves.
In the provincial capital of Herat city – 30km southeast of the quake epicentres in hard-to-reach Zenda Jan district – Doctors Without Borders said the injured now faced a new ordeal.
“More than 340 patients discharged yesterday don’t want to leave the hospital as they have no homes to return to,” the charity said on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.