Fifteen members of the same family are among the more than 1,000 dead in the 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday. They were buried by the rubble: “Seven in one room, five in another and three in another died”, sighs in her bed and with her face contracted by tears, Bibi Hawa, a 55-year-old woman who lived in the district of Gayan, one of the most affected, in the Afghan province of Paktika.
Sawar Khan, another survivor of the country’s worst catastrophe in two decades, mourns another indigestible loss: “I lost thirteen members of my family, including my mother, my sisters, and four of my children. My wife and daughter are hospitalized in another room,” explains Sawar Khan, together with his son Dadullah, while receiving care in a hospital room in the Urgon district, in the same province.
Paktika and Khost, bordering neighboring Pakistan, are the two provinces most affected by the earthquake with its epicenter in the city of Khost, which killed at least 1,030 people and left more than 1,500 injured. The quake caught people in their sleep, with little time to flee outside their flimsy adobe dwellings in these remote mountainous provinces. “I was only able to rescue two of my children and my wife, because there was too much dust and debris on the ground,” says Khan lying on a bed, with injuries to his right leg and head, a blow that prevents him from “speaking well.” “.
After more than 24 hours of the catastrophe, Afghanistan continues with the search efforts, with the hope of finding survivors and recovering the bodies of the victims. Their efforts are hampered by a lack of resources, mountainous terrain, and heavy rains. Some survivors were clearing rubble with their bare hands as help was delayed.
Afghanistan has only a very limited number of helicopters and planes. The UN, which noted that at least 2,000 houses had been destroyed – each inhabited by an average of seven or eight people – also highlighted the lack of clean-up equipment.
In the neighboring district of Gayan, many survivors had to spend the night outdoors, with fires and a blanket to combat the cold, while children in groups cried inconsolably. The shrouded bodies of five minors, or others of several adults, were waiting on cots to be taken by their relatives for the funeral rites. Some survivors were scouring the ruins of their homes, aimlessly sorting through rubble and beams.
“It is difficult to access the affected sites” especially because “the area was hit last night by floods caused by heavy rains,” said the head of information and culture of Paktika province, Mohammad Amin Huzaifa, on Thursday. Heavy rains have also triggered landslides that have delayed rescue efforts and damaged telephone and power lines, making it difficult to get information on the ground.
The Taliban government has called in the army, but it has few resources. Its financial resources are very limited, after the freezing of billions of assets held abroad and the abrupt cessation of Western international aid, which has sustained the country for 20 years and is now coming back in a trickle since the return to power of the Islamists.
NGOs and UN agencies are less present in the country than in the past. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, assured, however, that the UN is “fully mobilized” to help Afghanistan, with the permanent deployment of first aid teams and the shipment of medicine and food.
The population needs shelter as a priority, due to the rains and the unusual cold this season, but also food and non-food aid and assistance in water, hygiene and sanitation services, indicated the Coordination Table for Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) of The United Nations. “We ask the Islamic Emirate and the whole country to come forward and help us,” said a survivor who gave his name as Hakimullah. “We have nothing and nothing, not even a tent to live in.”
The Taliban announced on Thursday that they had received two planes loaded with help from Iran and one from Qatar. Eight truckloads of food and first aid supplies from neighboring Pakistan also arrived in Paktika province.
The European Union also said on Wednesday that it was ready to “provide emergency assistance”, while the United States was “deeply saddened” and announced that it would examine its humanitarian “response options”.
Badly equipped, the Afghan health system is also under great pressure. “Our country is poor and lacks resources. It is a humanitarian crisis. It is like a tsunami,” lamented Mohammad Yahya Wiar, director of the hospital in Sharan, the capital of Paktika, where several dozen survivors were transferred, including the already mentioned Bibi Hawa, whose entire family was taken away by the devastating tremor: “Now I’m alone, I don’t have anyone anymore”.
