The spokesperson for the Ministry of Disasters of Afghanistan updated this Sunday the number of victims of the chain of earthquakes that shook the west of the country this Saturday and have continued to have lower intensity aftershocks. The balance, still provisional, amounts to more than 2,000 people dead and more than 9,000 injured, according to the Taliban administration. There are also 1,329 houses destroyed. These are the deadliest tremors in years in a country prone to earthquakes.
The earthquakes occurred 35 km northwest of the city of Herat, and one of them had a magnitude of 6.3, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Mullah Janan Sayeeq, spokesman for the Disaster Ministry, told Reuters there were 2,053 dead, 9,240 injured and 1,329 houses damaged or destroyed.
More than 200 dead had been transferred to different hospitals, an official from Herat’s health department who identified himself as Dr. Danish told Reuters, adding that the majority were women and children. The bodies had been “moved to various places: military bases, hospitals,” Danish said.
The earthquakes caused panic in Herat, said Naseema, a resident of the city, on Saturday. “People came out of their houses, we are all in the streets,” he wrote in a text message to Reuters, adding that the city was feeling consecutive tremors.
“Only I am left,” says a man in tears who is looking for his entire family, who was trapped in the rubble of his house after one of the worst earthquakes and consecutive aftershocks that shook western Afghanistan yesterday, leaving more than 2,000 dead and more than a thousand injured.
“Only I was left, 14 of my relatives are under this rubble,” shouts the man standing on a hill of ruins, desperate to find the body of the entire family, buried among the remains of his adobe and stone house and still without knowing if anyone is still alive.
“Even my five-day-old son is under these clouds of dust… Oh, God!” implores the man, who picks up the pieces of his home with his hands and scatters them angrily into the air, in a video that It went viral on social networks, lasting less than a minute.
In the area where the man is located, only the entrance door and a part of the wall that outlined the land of his home remain standing, of which nothing remains.
“Please bring something to rescue them and get them out, please,” the man says as he points to a tower of rubble and stones, where he believes the bodies of his family could be trapped.
The NGO Doctors Without Borders is supporting medical care at the Herat regional hospital, “where more than 300 injured people have arrived,” as reported on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
“We have installed 5 medical tents to house up to 80 patients and we are supporting the emergency room with personnel and medical supplies,” added the international organization.
Afghanistan felt at least seven tremors this Saturday. The first of all, the largest, occurred at 12:11 (5:30 GMT) at a depth of 14 kilometers and 33 kilometers from the city of Zindah Jan, located in the province of Herat, according to the USGS.
The fourth earthquake, also measuring 6.3, was recorded about ten kilometers deep and about 29 kilometers from Zindah Jan.
Later, the US seismology service felt two more tremors almost an hour later in Herat province of 4.8 and 4.9 degrees, respectively.
The Asian country is among the countries most prone to natural disasters, being located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, a point of great seismic activity and a common point of origin of telluric movements in the region.
However, Afghanistan has a very vulnerable population, mostly poor, in addition to lacking sufficient infrastructure to deal with disasters such as floods or earthquakes.
At the end of June last year, a similar earthquake of magnitude 5.9 in the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktika and Khost, bordering Pakistan, caused the death of more than a thousand people and injured some 1,500, in addition to the destruction of hundreds of households.
Afghanistan also suffered one of the largest disasters caused by earthquakes in 1998 in the north of the country, when two earthquakes of magnitude 5.9 and 6 in February caused the death of some 4,000 people. A few months later, at the end of May, another magnitude 7 earthquake hit the area again and caused around 5,000 deaths.
