NURGAL, Afghanistan: The death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend rose sharply to more than 2,200 on Thursday (Sep 4), according to a new toll, making it the deadliest in decades to hit the country.
The vast majority of those killed in the magnitude-6.0 earthquake that jolted the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday were in Kunar province, where 2,205 people died and 3,640 were injured, according to a Taliban government toll.
Another 12 people were killed and hundreds injured in the neighbouring provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman.
The toll had been expected to rise as volunteers and rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble.
“Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from destroyed houses during search and rescue operations,” deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat wrote on X on Thursday, announcing the new toll, adding that “rescue efforts are still ongoing”.
Limited access to the hardest hit areas of mountainous Kunar province has delayed rescue and relief efforts, with rockfalls from repeated aftershocks obstructing already precarious roads etched onto the side of cliffs.
Various countries have flown in aid, but hundreds of villagers in the hard-hit Nurgal district were still stranded in the open air, squeezing multiple families under pieces of tarp pulled from the rubble and unsure of where they would get a morsel to eat.
