Many survivors of the deadliest earthquake to hit Afghanistan in the last two decades suffered this Friday without food or any shelter as they waited in their devastated villages for the arrival of aid, delayed by the rains that exacerbate the suffering of the victims.
The 5.9-magnitude earthquake that hit eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border on Wednesday left more than 1,000 dead and homeless thousands.
In some of the worst-hit districts, entire villages have been razed to the ground and survivors say they can’t even find the shovels needed to bury the dead.
“There are no blankets, no tents, no shelters. Our entire water distribution system is destroyed. Everything is devastated, houses are destroyed. There is literally nothing to eat,” Zaitullah told an AFP team. Ghurziwal, 21, in a village in Paktika province.
Mohammad Amin Huzaifa, director of information for this province, said heavy rains and flooding have complicated rescue efforts.
Communications were also affected, since the earthquake knocked down telecommunications towers and power lines.
The earthquake hit an area that had already suffered the effect of heavy rains, causing rockslides and landslides that destroyed precarious hamlets installed on mountain slopes.
Authorities estimate that close to 10,000 houses were destroyed, a very alarming figure in an area where the average household houses 20 people.
“Seven died in one room, five in another and three in another,” Bibi Hawa, a wounded woman from a hospital in Sharan, the capital of Paktika province, told AFP.
The Save the Children organization estimates that more than 118,000 minors are affected by the disaster.
“Many children are now probably without clean water to drink, without food and without a place to sleep,” the organization explained.
The UN mobilizes its efforts
The disaster poses a logistical challenge for Afghanistan’s new Taliban government, isolated internationally by its radical Islamist regime that discriminates against women and girls in particular.
The country lost the foreign aid it depended on when the Taliban came to power in August and even before Wednesday’s disaster, the UN warned of a humanitarian crisis looming over the entire population.
The earthquake generated a wave of solidarity from abroad, but concerns are growing about how this aid will be used.
“The distribution of aid will be transparent,” a government spokesman, Bilal Karimi, told AFP.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, stated that the organization is “fully mobilized” and that it will deploy health teams and supply medicine and food in the earthquake zone.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has dispatched tents, blankets and plastic sheets and the World Food Program has delivered nearly 14,000 rations and the World Health Organization has sent ten tons of medical supplies, enough to carry out 5,400 surgeries.
Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Thursday on Twitter that aid flights had arrived from Qatar and Iran. Pakistan meanwhile sent truckloads of tents, medical supplies and food across the land border.
Since the Taliban came to power, Afghanistan only has a very limited number of helicopters and planes for rescue tasks.
Afghanistan frequently experiences earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, located at the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
The deadliest earthquake in recent Afghanistan history (5,000 dead) occurred in May 1998 in the northeastern provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.
