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Rescue teams struggled Wednesday to reach survivors days after a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan left more than 1,400 people dead, as access to remote areas remained obstructed.A magnitude-6.0 shallow earthquake hit the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday, collapsing mud-brick homes on families as they slept.Fearful of the near-constant aftershocks, people huddled in the open or struggled to unearth those trapped under the heaps of flattened buildings.The earthquake killed at least 1,469 people and injured more than 3,700, according to the latest toll from Taliban authorities, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country.UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on X that the quake had “affected more than 500,000 people” in eastern Afghanistan. The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces.Access remained difficult, as aftershocks caused rockfall, stymying access to already isolated villages and keeping families outdoors for fear of the remains of damaged homes collapsing on them.- ‘Everyone is afraid’ -“Everyone is afraid and there are many aftershocks,” Awrangzeeb Noori, 35, told AFP from the village of Dara-i-Nur in Nangarhar province. “We spend all day and night in the field without shelter.”The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of its aid teams “had to walk for 20 kilometres (12 miles) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members”.The World Health Organization said Wednesday it was scaling up its emergency response to address the “immense” needs and that it required more resources in order to “prevent further losses”.WHO has appealed for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services and supply distribution.”Every hour counts,” WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan Jamshed Tanoli said in a statement. “Hospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything.”The Taliban government’s deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat told AFP that areas which had taken days to reach had been finally accessed.”We cannot determine the date for finishing the operation in all areas as the area is very mountainous and it is very difficult to reach every area.”ActionAid noted that women and girls were particularly vulnerable in emergencies as they face steep restrictions under the Taliban authorities.Residents of Jalalabad, the nearest city to the epicentre, donated money and goods including blankets. “I am a simple labourer and I came here to help the earthquake victims because I felt very sad for them,” said resident Mohammad Rahman. – Deepening crisis -Around 85 percent of the Afghan population lives on less than one dollar per day, according to the United Nations.After decades of conflict, Afghanistan faces endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in the years since the Taliban takeover.Even as the country reeled from its latest disaster, Pakistan began a new push to expel Afghans, with more than 6,300 people crossing the Torkham border point in Nangarhar province Tuesday.”Given the circumstances, I appeal to the (Pakistan government) to pause the implementation of the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan,” UNHCR chief Grandi said.The Norwegian Refugee Council also cautioned that “forcing Afghans to return will only deepen the crisis”.It is the third major earthquake since the Taliban authorities took power in 2021, but there are even fewer resources for the cash-strapped government’s response after the United States slashed assistance to the country when President Donald Trump took office in January.Even before the earthquake, the United Nations estimated it had obtained less than a third of the funding required for operations countrywide.In two days, the Taliban government’s defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate around 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals.Fitrat said a camp had been set up in Khas Kunar district to coordinate emergency aid, while two other sites were opened near the epicentre “to oversee the transfer of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors”.Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, with the country still recovering from previous disasters.Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Wednesday for a suicide bombing that authorities said killed 15 people and wounded dozens more at a political rally in southwestern Pakistan.The claim for Tuesday’s attack in Quetta, capital of restive Balochistan province, was made through the group’s propaganda arm. Balochistan interior minister Hamza Shafqat gave an updated death toll of 15.Dozens were also wounded in the attack by a suicide bomber with eight kilograms (17.5 pounds) of explosives in a stadium parking lot in Quetta, where hundreds of members of the Balochistan National Party (BNP) had gathered, Shafqat said.Balochistan, a province on the border with Iran and Afghanistan, is regularly the scene of violence, often carried out by jihadists from the regional branch of the Islamic State, or Baloch separatists.Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, but also its poorest, with roughly 70 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Baloch separatists claim to be fighting to end discrimination against the Baloch people on their land.Pakistani forces have been battling an insurgency in the province for more than a decade. In 2024 the region saw a sharp rise in violence, with 782 people killed, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad.While Islamic State jihadists consider political parties and state institutions to be heretical, they rarely attack Baloch activists.But on Tuesday evening in the Quetta stadium parking lot as BNP rally participants were dispersing, a suicide bomber detonated explosives.IS published a photo of the alleged attacker, his face hidden by a scarf.BNP leader Akhtar Mengal, who at the time of the attack was leaving the rally after delivering a speech, posted on X that he was “safe, but deeply heartbroken at the loss of our workers.”The BNP campaigns on a platform calling for greater rights and economic investment in the wellbeing of members of the Baloch ethnicity.Since 2014, China has invested significantly in building a road-and-infrastructure project in Balochistan linked to its One Belt One Road initiative.Many Baloch, however, say the benefits have been reaped only by outsiders.Since January 1, according to AFP figures, more than 430 people, mostly members of the security forces, have been killed in violence carried out by armed groups fighting the state in Balochistan and neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Elsewhere in Balochistan on Tuesday, five paramilitary personnel were killed and four wounded when a homemade bomb exploded as their convoy passed through a district near the Iranian border, a senior local official told AFP.In March, Baloch Liberation Army separatists carried out a spectacular hostage-taking of some 350 people on a train there. Authorities said at least 31 people were killed.

Families huddled hungry and homeless days after a deadly earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan, not daring to set foot in the few remaining buildings for fear an aftershock could bring them down.The initial powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck remote regions along the border with Pakistan, killing more than 1,400 people, with at least six strong aftershocks and countless smaller tremors.Some farming villages tucked among the green mountainsides were flattened, with people still under the rubble days later.Elsewhere, some houses were only partially destroyed, but residents preferred to brave the elements than risk being crushed.Still haunted by the “terrifying night” when the quake destroyed his house in the village of Dar-i-nur in Nangarhar province, Emran Mohammad Aref said he had since slept with four other family members outside on a rough plastic mat.”There was a tremor yesterday and there was also one this morning,” Aref told AFP. “Now we have no place to live and we are asking everyone for help.”While those with the means fled the village, residents who had no choice but to stay cobbled together makeshift shelters with whatever they could find among the destruction.Even in Jalalabad, Nangarhar’s provincial capital, which suffered no damage but felt the quake and its aftershocks, “we are very afraid”, said Fereshta, a 42-year-old doctor.”Every time I take a step, I feel like the ground is shaking. We don’t stay inside the house and we sleep in the garden, constantly thinking there will be another quake,” she said.- ‘Give us shelter’ -Similar scenes are playing out across the affected region, some in the isolated areas of hard-hit Kunar province that are still cut off from aid by landslides caused by the quake and aftershocks.But in fleeing their homes — often built on high ground — and taking refuge in low-lying fields, riverbeds or by roadsides, survivors risk being hit by rockfall if aftershocks strike, warned Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad, a senior official in Kunar’s Nurgal district.”The area is very dangerous, you cannot stay there long or even walk through it,” said Yaad.The United Nations said it has 14,000 tents ready for distribution.The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) told AFP it has at least 700 tents available, but cannot deliver them to survivors because of difficult access to the villages.”Help us, give us shelter, help my children, we have nothing left,” pleaded Sorat, a housewife injured in the quake along with her husband and children.After being pulled from the ruins of her house by rescuers, she was treated in a regional hospital, then sent back to her village, where nothing awaits her, she told AFP.While waiting for aid, “we are staying in the valley”, she said, sitting in her blue all-enveloping burqa on a traditional simple woven bed surrounded by her three small children.This earthquake, one of the deadliest in Afghanistan in decades, is “the last thing families with young children need in a country where many don’t have enough food, and a large portion of the children are already malnourished”, the World Food Programme said, adding the situation “is brutal”.Afghanistan, still fragile after decades of war and a prolonged humanitarian crisis, has been rocked by other severe, deadly quakes in recent years — one in 2023 in western Herat, on the other side of the country near Iran.That first 6.3-magnitude tremor was followed by at least eight powerful aftershocks and destroyed entire villages.

Hope was quickly fading of finding survivors in the rubble of homes devastated by the weekend’s powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, as emergency services struggled to reach remote villages on Wednesday.A shallow magnitude-6.0 earthquake hit the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late on Sunday, collapsing mud-brick homes on families as they slept.Fearful of the near-constant aftershocks rattling the area, people huddled in the open air while rescuers struggled to unearth those trapped under the heaps of flattened buildings.The earthquake killed more than 1,400 people and injured over 3,300, Taliban authorities said, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country.The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces.In Kunar’s Nurgal district, victims remained trapped under the rubble and were difficult to rescue, local official Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad told AFP on Wednesday.”There are some villages which have still not received aid,” he said.Landslides caused by the earthquake stymied access to already isolated villages.The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of its aid teams “had to walk for 20 kilometres (12 miles) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members”.The World Health Organization warned the number of casualties from the earthquake was expected to rise, “as many remain trapped in destroyed buildings”.More than 12,000 people have been directly affected by the earthquake, according to ActionAid, noting women and girls were particularly vulnerable in emergencies as they face steep restrictions under the Taliban authorities.An AFP journalist in Mazar Dara village in Kunar said a small mobile clinic was deployed to provide emergency care but people were still in desperate need of emergency food, water and shelter.One family of 10 shared a meagre meal of just two pieces of bread, he said.The World Food Programme said its teams were working to provide provisions but “the reality is brutal” in a country where many already go hungry.- Deepening crisis -This is the third major earthquake since the Taliban took power in 2021, but there are even fewer resources for the cash-strapped government’s response after the United States slashed assistance to the country when President Donald Trump took office in January.Even before the earthquake, the United Nations estimated it had obtained less than a third of the funding required for operations countrywide.Multiple countries have pledged assistance but NGOs and the UN have voiced alarm that dwindling aid could hamper relief efforts in one of the poorest countries in the world. In two days, the Taliban government’s defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate around 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals.On Tuesday, a defence ministry commission said it had instructed “the relevant institutions to take measures in all areas to normalise the lives of the earthquake victims”, without providing further details on the plans to do so. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said a camp had been set up in Khas Kunar district to coordinate emergency aid, while two other sites were opened near the epicentre “to oversee the transfer of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors”.After decades of conflict, Afghanistan is facing endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in the years since the Taliban takeover.”This earthquake could not have come at a worse time,” Jagan Chapagain, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said in a statement late Tuesday.”The disaster not only brings immediate suffering but also deepens Afghanistan’s already fragile humanitarian crisis.”Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, with the country still recovering from previous disasters. Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.And a 5.9-magnitude quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

At least 25 people were killed in three attacks in Pakistan on Tuesday, officials said, including 14 who died after a suicide bomber targeted a political rally in the southwestern province of Balochistan.  Dozens of people were wounded in that explosion, which took place in the parking lot of a stadium in the provincial capital, Quetta, where hundreds of members of the Balochistan National Party (BNP) had gathered, two provincial officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.At least seven of the wounded were in critical condition, the officials said.Another attack in Balochistan, near the border with Iran, claimed five lives on Tuesday, while six soldiers were killed after a suicide attack on their base in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, but also its poorest, and regularly ranks among the lowest on human development indicator scorecards. The BNP campaigns on a platform calling for greater rights and economic investment in the wellbeing of members of the Baloch ethnicity.The party’s chief, Akhtar Mengal, had just finished speaking at the Quetta rally and was leaving the venue when the attack occurred. He said he was “safe” in a post on social media. Since 2014, China has invested significantly in building a road-and-infrastructure project in Balochistan linked to its One Belt One Road initiative. Many Baloch, however, say the benefits have been reaped only by outsiders.Pakistani forces have been battling an insurgency in the province for more than a decade, and in 2024 the region saw a sharp rise in violence, with 782 people killed. Elsewhere in Balochistan on Tuesday, five paramilitary personnel were killed and four wounded when a homemade bomb exploded as their convoy passed through a district near the Iranian border, a senior local official told AFP.No group immediately claimed responsibility for either attack. – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa attack -Since January 1, according to AFP figures, more than 430 people, mostly members of the security forces, have been killed in violence carried out by armed groups fighting the state in Balochistan and neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On Tuesday, six soldiers were killed in an attack on a paramilitary headquarters in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa city of Bannu, the military said. “A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the gate of the FC camp, after which five more suicide attackers entered,” a government official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.The ensuing exchange of fire lasted 12 hours, ending after the six attackers were killed, the official said. The militant group Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan claimed responsibility for that attack.

Strong aftershocks to a powerful earthquake that killed more than 1,400 people at the weekend rattled eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday as survivors in remote hard-hit villages prepared for another night without shelter. Temporary shelters had not yet reached the Mazar Dara area of Kunar province, an AFP journalist said, with roads still blocked to the remote, mountainous region bordering Pakistan where the worst of the earthquake was felt. “There is no food… there is nothing, everything has been buried in the rubble,” Nurgal district official Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad told AFP. Residents, including elderly people and children were “in the open air” with little to protect them from wet weather, he said, adding that “we still feel strong aftershocks”.A 5.2-magnitude earthquake jolted the region near the epicentre of the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that hit late Sunday night — one of at least six aftershocks recorded by the US Geological Survey.”These aftershocks are constant, but they have not caused any casualties yet,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, the disaster management spokesman in Kunar, told AFP. The number of victims from Sunday’s earthquake has mounted steadily, with 1,411 people dead and 3,124 injured in Kunar alone, chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday, making it one of the deadliest to hit the country in decades. Another dozen people were killed and hundreds injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province.Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with dwindling aid since the Taliban seized power in 2021, undermining its ability to respond to disasters.The devastation could affect “hundreds of thousands”, said United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte.Rescuers searched through the night and all day for survivors in the rubble of homes flattened in Kunar, where more than 5,400 houses were destroyed, government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.The European Union said it was sending 130 tonnes of emergency supplies and providing one million euros ($1.2 million) to help victims of the deadly quake. The bloc has become one of the key aid donors to Afghanistan after the United States — previously the country’s largest aid provider — cut all but a slice of its assistance after President Donald Trump took office in January.The aid cuts risk impeding the response to the earthquake, sector experts told AFP, in a country already facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises after decades of conflict.”The scale of need far exceeds current resources,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said, noting that funding cuts had hit humanitarian air services, “limiting access to remote communities”. IFRC said it had launched an emergency appeal for 25 million Swiss francs ($31 million) to help with the earthquake response and recovery, as various countries pledged to send support.As Taliban military helicopters flew in food and continued to transport victims, residents buried their dead, including children, wrapping them in white shrouds and praying over their bodies before laying them to rest.- ‘Find their families’ -Sunday’s earthquake epicentre was about 27 kilometres (17 miles) from Jalalabad, according to the USGS, and just eight kilometres below the Earth’s surface.Such relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially as the majority of Afghans live in mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.Many of those living in the quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghans forced back to the country from Iran and Pakistan in recent years, many coming through the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province. Rahmatullah Khaksar, who heads the emergency ward at a hospital in Jalalabad, Nangarhar’s provincial capital, said they had received 600 injured since Sunday night. “Most of the patients were trauma patients. They were hit on the head, back, abdomen and legs,” he told AFP, adding they had cleared a ward for unidentified patients “so they will stay there until they find their families”.Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range near the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates.Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.A 5.9-magnitude quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

A fresh 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit the east of Afghanistan on Tuesday, jolting a region still struggling with the aftermath of a powerful quake at the weekend that killed 1,400 people.The epicentre of the tremor was close to where a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit late Sunday night, devastating remote areas in mountainous provinces near the border with Pakistan.The “quake was felt in the same areas which were affected in Kunar (province) in the first earthquake,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, the disaster management spokesman in the hard-hit province, told AFP.”These aftershocks are constant, but they have not caused any casualties yet.”The quake was reported by the US Geological Survey late Tuesday.The number of victims from Sunday’s earthquake has mounted steadily, with 1,411 people dead and 3,124 injured in Kunar alone, chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday, making it one of the deadliest to hit the country in decades. Another dozen people were killed and hundreds injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province.Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with dwindling aid since the Taliban seized power in 2021 undermining its ability to respond to disasters.The devastation could affect “hundreds of thousands”, said United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte.Rescuers searched through the night and all day for survivors in the rubble of homes flattened in Kunar, where more than 5,400 houses were destroyed, government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said on X.Many of the worst-affected areas were still unreachable by road, but emergency facilities were being set up and multiple countries had announced they would provide aid, Fitrat said. The European Union said it was sending 130 tonnes of emergency supplies and providing one million euros ($1.2 million) to help victims of the deadly quake.The bloc has become one of the key aid donors to Afghanistan after the United States — previously the country’s largest aid provider — cut all but a slice of its assistance after President Donald Trump took office in January.The aid cuts risk impeding the response to the earthquake, sector experts told AFP, in a country already facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises after decades of conflict.”The scale of need far exceeds current resources,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement, noting that funding cuts had hit humanitarian air services, “limiting access to remote communities”.Emergency workers struggled to reach mountainous areas and villagers joined the rescue efforts, using their bare hands to clear debris from mud and stone homes built into steep valleys.Obaidullah Stoman, 26, who travelled to the village of Wadir to search for a friend, was overwhelmed by the level of destruction.”I’m searching here, but I didn’t see him. It was very difficult for me to see the conditions here,” he told AFP.”There is only rubble left.”The dead, including children, were wrapped in white shrouds by villagers who prayed over their bodies before burying them.- ‘Whole house collapsed’ -The earthquake epicentre was about 27 kilometres (17 miles) from Jalalabad, according to the USGS, and struck just eight kilometres below the Earth’s surface.Such relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially since the majority of Afghans live in mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.Many of those living in the quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghans forced back to the country from Iran and Pakistan in recent years, many coming through the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province.Rahmatullah Khaksar, who heads the emergency ward at a hospital in Jalalabad, Nangarhar’s provincial capital, said they had received 600 injured since Sunday night. “Most of the patients were trauma patients. They were hit on the head, back, abdomen and legs,” he told AFP, adding they had cleared a ward for unidentified patients “so they will stay there until they find their families”.Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range near the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates.Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.A 5.9-magnitude quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Afghanistan was already facing severe crises when it was rocked by another devastating earthquake, but this time there are fewer resources to muster after foreign funding was slashed to the bone this year.Less international aid “means fewer ambulances, fewer doctors, fewer nurses, fewer midwives” to send into the battered farming communities of Afghanistan’s mountainous east, said Arthur Comon, deputy director of operations at the non-governmental group Premiere Urgence Internationale (PUI).The humanitarian sector has issued repeated calls since the start of the year for help in Afghanistan, which faces soaring poverty, worsening drought and the mass return of migrants expelled from neighbouring countries.The 6.0-magnitude earthquake that struck around midnight on Sunday killed more than 1,400 people and injured over 3,000, a toll that was still rising.It hit “in the very worst moment”, said Rahmat Nabi Shirzad, communications officer for the UK-based NGO Islamic Relief in Afghanistan.”The impact of these global cuts to humanitarian aid is very clear,” especially in health services for the hardest-hit province of Kunar, said Shirzad, who was also on the ground after deadly earthquakes in Herat province in 2023 and Paktika in 2022. Compared to the support provided after those disasters, the resources for Kunar are “not at that level”.- ‘Already bled dry’ -“This earthquake is a crisis within a crisis,” United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte told AFP.”Survivors now face overcrowded clinics, long waits and severe shortages of doctors and medicines — just when emergency trauma care is needed most.”Funding cuts forced the closure of 400 health facilities, Ratwatte said.The United States had been Afghanistan’s main donor, providing $3.71 billion in aid since the Taliban takeover in 2021. It cut all but a sliver of funding in January.”The Americans had put the country on a drip feed, and then pulled it out before the patient was healed,” said a source at a French NGO. “The earthquake is now ravaging a population that was already bled dry.”Beyond Washington, the UN said in June that it was drastically scaling back global humanitarian aid due to the “deepest funding cuts ever”.Afghanistan’s aid had already been dwindling as donors hesitated, in part due to the Taliban’s restrictions on women. A senior official in the Taliban’s information and culture ministry called on the international community to help.”We are providing basic services… but the rehabilitation of those impacted and reconstruction of their homes is not in the capacity of the Islamic Emirate alone,” said Atiqullah Azizi. Half of Afghanistan’s 48 million people are already in need of humanitarian aid, one in five goes hungry, and 3.5 million children under five are acutely malnourished, according to the UN. The earthquake is “a key moment to see how donors react”, International Rescue Committee’s Vice President of Emergencies Bob Kitchen told AFP. “What comes next will be very different — we would ordinarily be already on the phone to US government colleagues,” working to deploy funding for the earthquake response, he said.- ‘Lost interest in Afghanistan’ -PUI’s Comon said it was “unlikely” that new funding would be secured for the post-earthquake response beyond perhaps only “small top-ups to cover the most urgent needs”.The French NGO, which closed 60 health centres and laid off 480 staff this year after the US cuts, has deployed mobile clinics in the quake-hit provinces but fears for the long term.”It’s been a long time since the general public lost interest in Afghanistan,” the staff member said, adding that he hopes for aid from the European Union but expects little from the Americans, who are “completely out of the picture”.UN agencies have launched fundraising appeals, and an initial $5 million has been released from the emergency response fund.But even before the earthquake, the UN estimated it had only $606 million available for its operations across Afghanistan out of the $2.79 billion required. “With these cuts, we are being forced to make ever-tougher choices, concentrating scarce resources on those most vulnerable, while leaving many needs unmet,” Ratwatte said.

A powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend killed more 1,400 and injured 3,000 others, the Taliban government said Tuesday, making it one of the deadliest to hit the country in decades.The casualty toll has mounted steadily since the 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit late Sunday night, devastating remote areas in mountainous provinces near the border with Pakistan. Chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on X Tuesday that 1,411 people were killed and 3,124 people were injured in the hard-hit province of Kunar alone. Another dozen people were killed and hundreds injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province.The earthquake could impact “hundreds of thousands”, said United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte.Rescuers were still desperately searching Tuesday for survivors in the rubble of homes flattened in Kunar.Emergency “operations continued throughout the night”, the head of the Kunar Provincial Disaster Management Authority, Ehsanullah Ehsan, told AFP.He said there were “still injured people left in the distant villages” in need of evacuation to hospitals.Villagers joined the rescue efforts, using their bare hands to clear debris from mud and stone homes built into steep valleys.Obaidullah Stoman, 26, who travelled to the village of Wadir to search for a friend, was overwhelmed by the level of destruction.”I’m searching here, but I didn’t see him. It was very difficult for me to see the conditions here,” he told AFP.”There is only rubble left.”The dead, including children, were wrapped in white shrouds by villagers who prayed over their bodies before burying them.Some of the hardest-hit villages remain inaccessible due to blocked roads, the UN migration agency told AFP.The earthquake epicentre was about 27 kilometres (17 miles) from Jalalabad, according to the US Geological Survey, which said it struck just eight kilometres below the Earth’s surface.Such relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially since the majority of Afghans live in low-rise, mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.After decades of conflict, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, facing a protracted humanitarian crisis and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in recent years.Since the Taliban seized power in 2021, foreign aid to the country has been slashed, undermining the already impoverished nation’s ability to respond to disasters.The United States was the largest aid donor until early 2025, when all but a sliver of funds were cancelled after President Donald Trump took office.In June, the United Nations said it was drastically scaling back its global humanitarian aid plans due to the “deepest funding cuts ever”.On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement the organisation was working with authorities to “swiftly assess needs, provide emergency assistance and stand ready to mobilise additional support”, and announced an initial $5 million.- ‘Whole house collapsed’ -Many of those living in the quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghans who have returned to the country from Iran and Pakistan in recent years.Helicopters shuttled the injured from the remote village of Wadir in Nurgal district to hospitals in the nearest city, Jalalabad.Fourteen-year-old Akhlaq was injured and evacuated to the hospital, but five members of his family were killed when the earthquake shook Nurgal. “Our whole house collapsed, my brothers and father were all buried. Only I survived and made it out,” he told AFP. “Then I heard my father’s voice and I managed to rescue him.” “There are victims who are still under the rubble, but there is nobody to help them and pull them out.”Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates.In October 2023, western Herat province was devastated by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.A 5.9-magnitude quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

A thousand villages in India’s Punjab state are marooned by deadly floods, with thousands forced to seek shelter in relief camps, government authorities say.Flooding across the northwestern state killed at least 29 people and affected over 250,000 last month, with the state’s chief minister calling it “one of the worst flood disasters in decades”.The region is often dubbed India’s breadbasket, but more than 940 square kilometres (360 square miles) of farmland are flooded, leading to “devastating crop losses”, Punjab’s Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Modi on Monday assured him of the federal government’s “full support”.Authorities have said they fear a “huge loss of livestock”, the full extent of which will only be clear when the waters recede, according to a bulletin issued by the state authorities late Monday.India’s army and disaster teams have carried out vast rescue operations, deploying more than 1,000 boats and 30 helicopters to rescue the stranded or supply food.”The most important thing is to save the lives of people and helpless animals trapped in the water,” Mann said in a statement.Rivers in the region cross into Pakistan, where floodwater has also engulfed swathes of land.Floods and landslides are common during the June-September monsoon season in the subcontinent, but experts say climate change, coupled with poorly planned development, is increasing their frequency, severity and impact.Northwest India has seen rainfall surge by more than a third on average from June to September, according to the national weather department.In the capital Delhi, relentless rains have swollen the Yamuna river — which breached its danger mark on Tuesday, inundating several areas and creating traffic snarl-ups lasting for hours.Deadly floods triggered by record-breaking rain also killed dozens in India’s Jammu and Kashmir region last month.