Скачать или смотреть Huge earthquake kills over 800 in Afghanistan

Huge earthquake kills over 800 in Afghanistan

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Over 800 people have been killed and at least 2,800 injured after a powerful 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan, reducing homes to piles of rubble

The earthquake - one of the worst to hit the nation in recent years - struck just before midnight on Sunday (local time), with its epicentre 27km away from the city of Jalalabad.

The worst of the destruction was experienced in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake struck about eight kilometres below the Earth’s surface.

Rescuers searched into the night to pull to safety those trapped under the debris of simple mud and stone homes built into steep valleys, of the which majority of Afghans live.

Around 800 people were killed and 2,500 injured in Kunar alone, near the epicentre, Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said..

Some of the most severely impacted villages in Kunar remain inaccessible due to road blockages, the UN migration agency warned in a statement to AFP.

The disaster is unfolding against a grim funding outlook for humanitarian assistance.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, facing a protracted humanitarian crisis and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran this year.

The US was the largest aid donor to Afghanistan 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”.

Many living in quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghans who have returned to the country from Iran and Pakistan in recent years.

“They wanted to build their homes here,” Yaad added.

Nangarhar and Kunar provinces border Pakistan and have received many waves of Afghan returnees deported or forced to leave, often with no work and nowhere to go.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres expressed his condolences to those impacted by the “devastating” earthquake and said the UN would “spare no effort to assist those in need in the affected areas”.

“I stand in full solidarity with the people of Afghanistan after the devastating earthquake that hit the country earlier today,” he wrote in a post on X.

“I extend my deepest condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to those injured.”

In a post shared by the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened by the significant loss of life caused by the earthquake in the area of eastern Afghanistan”.

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates.

Since 1900, there have been 12 earthquakes with magnitudes greater than seven in northeast Afghanistan, according to Brian Baptie, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey.

“This scale of the seismic activity, the potential for multi-hazard events and the construction of structures in the region can combine to create significant loss of life in such events,” he said.

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.

Ravaged by four decades of war, Afghanistan is already contending with a series of humanitarian crises.

Since the return of the Taliban in 2021, foreign aid to Afghanistan has been slashed, undermining the impoverished nation’s already hamstrung ability to respond to disasters.

Around 85 per cent of the Afghan population lives on less than one dollar a day, according to the UN Development Programme.

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