Taliban seek help after deadly earthquake kills 1,000 in Afghanistan
The number of people who died in an earthquake in Afghanistan on Wednesday has reached 1,000, according to officials in charge of disaster management. More than 600 people were hurt, and the number of deaths is likely to increase as more information comes in from remote mountain villages. A spokesman for the foreign ministry said that the Taliban would be glad to get help from other countries.
After the magnitude 6.1 earthquake, pictures from Afghan media showed that houses had been turned into rubble and bodies wrapped in blankets were lying on the ground.
Health and aid workers said they didn’t know how many people were still stuck under rubble or in remote areas. They also noted that heavy rains, landslides, and the fact that many villages were on steep hillsides made it hard to reach them.
“There are still a lot of people buried in the ground. The rescue teams from the Islamic Emirate have arrived, and with the help of people from the area, they are trying to get the dead and hurt people out. “A health worker at a hospital in the hard-hit province of Paktika said this. He asked to remain anonymous because he was not allowed to talk to the media.
Setting up a rescue operation will be a big test for the hard-line Islamist Taliban government. They took over the country after 20 years of war last August, and sanctions have cut them off from much international help. Rescue efforts are led by the ministry of defence, which the Taliban run.
Loretta Hieber Girardet from the United Nations’ office for disaster risk reduction said that the terrain and weather would make it very hard to help people trapped under the rubble and give aid.
“The roads are bad even at the best of times, so setting up a humanitarian operation will be hard because it won’t be easy to get to the area,” she said, adding that the rain and tremor made it more likely that landslides would hurt humanitarian workers.
The U.N. office for humanitarian aid said it would send medical teams and give medical supplies.
Salahuddin Ayubi, an official from the interior ministry, said that the number of people who died was likely to go up because some of the villages were in remote mountain areas. However, it will take some time to get all the facts.
DEADLIEST QUAKE IN 20 YEARS- Afghanistan Earthquake
The quake on Wednesday killed the most people in Afghanistan since 2002. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said it hit about 27 miles (44 km) southeast of the city of Khost, near the border with Pakistan.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) said on Twitter that about 119 million people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India felt the quake. However, there were no immediate reports of damage or deaths in Pakistan.
The EMSC said the size of the earthquake was 6.1, but the USGC said it was only 5.9.
Disaster experts and aid workers said that the hilly areas that were poor and hit by the earthquake were especially at risk because of landslides and poorly built homes.
“We were all sleeping at home, and the room fell on us,” Gul Faraz said at a hospital in Paktika, where he was being treated for injuries along with his wife and children. He noted that some of the family had been killed.
“Not just one house in our area was destroyed, but all of them. So the whole area was destroyed.”
Ayubi said that 255 people were confirmed dead, and more than 200 were hurt in the eastern province of Paktika. In the area of Khost, there were 25 dead people and 90 people taken to the hospital.
Flooding in many parts of Afghanistan recently has blocked parts of the highway, making things harder for the government.
Afghanistan is also having a hard time with its economy. Last year, when the Taliban took over, many countries put restrictions on Afghanistan’s banks and cut billions of dollars in development aid.
But international groups like the United Nations have kept giving humanitarian aid.
The White House said that U.S. President Joe Biden told the U.S. Agency for International Development and other federal government partners to look at what the U.S. could do.
Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the U.N., said that the U.N. was doing everything it could to help. They were figuring out what was needed and giving some initial help.
“We are counting on the rest of the world to help the hundreds of families this latest disaster has hurt. Now is the time to stick together, “In a statement, he said.
There are a lot of earthquakes in large parts of South Asia because the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.
In 2015, an earthquake hit the remote northeast corner of Afghanistan, killing hundreds of people in Afghanistan and the nearby northern part of Pakistan.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
