The magnitude-6.0 earthquake that jolted the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday is one of the deadliest in the country in decades.
The toll -- 1,469 dead and more than 3,700 injured -- will likely rise, deputy Taliban government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said on Thursday.
"Additional bodies were recovered during these efforts, leading to an increase in the reported casualties," Fitrat wrote on X, adding that a new toll would be released later in the day.
"We cannot stop hoping" that injured people remain alive under the rubble, he told AFP.
Limited access to the hardest hit areas of mountainous Kunar province delayed rescue and relief efforts, with rockfalls from repeated aftershocks obstructing already precarious roads etched onto the side of cliffs.
While most of the areas that had been unreachable were accessed by Wednesday, expectations of finding survivors were fading fast.
"Many survivors are still believed to be trapped beneath collapsed homes in remote villages, and the window for finding them alive is rapidly closing," the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement late on Wednesday.
- 'Crisis within a crisis' -
Poor infrastructure in the impoverished country, still fragile from four decades of war, has also stymied the emergency response.
The WHO warned that local healthcare services were "under immense strain", with shortages of trauma supplies, medicines and staff.
The agency has appealed for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services and supply distribution.
"Every hour counts," WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan Jamshed Tanoli said in a statement. "Hospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything."
The loss of US foreign aid to the country in January this year has exacerbated the rapid depletion of emergency stockpiles and logistical resources.
NGOs and the UN have warned the earthquake creates a crisis within a crisis, with cash-strapped Afghanistan already contending with overlapping humanitarian disasters.
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on X that the quake had "affected more than 500,000 people" in eastern Afghanistan.
After decades of conflict, the country is contending with endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran since the Taliban's 2021 takeover.
Even as Afghanistan reeled from its latest disaster, Pakistan began a new push to expel Afghans, with more than 6,300 people crossing the Torkham border point in quake-hit Nangarhar province on Tuesday.
Days after quake, Afghan survivors still await aid
Jalalabad, Afghanistan (AFP) Sept 3, 2025 -
Rescue teams struggled Wednesday to reach survivors days after a powerful earthquake in eastern Afghanistan left more than 1,400 people dead, as access to remote areas remained obstructed.
A magnitude-6.0 shallow earthquake hit the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday, collapsing mud-brick homes on families as they slept.
Fearful of the near-constant aftershocks, people huddled in the open or struggled to unearth those trapped under the heaps of flattened buildings.
The earthquake killed at least 1,469 people and injured more than 3,700, according to the latest toll from Taliban authorities, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country.
UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on X that the quake had "affected more than 500,000 people" in eastern Afghanistan.
The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces.
Access remained difficult, as aftershocks caused rockfall, stymying access to already isolated villages and keeping families outdoors for fear of the remains of damaged homes collapsing on them.
- 'Everyone is afraid' -
"Everyone is afraid and there are many aftershocks," Awrangzeeb Noori, 35, told AFP from the village of Dara-i-Nur in Nangarhar province. "We spend all day and night in the field without shelter."
The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of its aid teams "had to walk for 20 kilometres (12 miles) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members".
The World Health Organization said Wednesday it was scaling up its emergency response to address the "immense" needs and that it required more resources in order to "prevent further losses".
WHO has appealed for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services and supply distribution.
"Every hour counts," WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan Jamshed Tanoli said in a statement. "Hospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything."
The Taliban government's deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat told AFP that areas which had taken days to reach had been finally accessed.
"We cannot determine the date for finishing the operation in all areas as the area is very mountainous and it is very difficult to reach every area."
ActionAid noted that women and girls were particularly vulnerable in emergencies as they face steep restrictions under the Taliban authorities.
Residents of Jalalabad, the nearest city to the epicentre, donated money and goods including blankets.
"I am a simple labourer and I came here to help the earthquake victims because I felt very sad for them," said resident Mohammad Rahman.
- Deepening crisis -
Around 85 percent of the Afghan population lives on less than one dollar per day, according to the United Nations.
After decades of conflict, Afghanistan faces endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in the years since the Taliban takeover.
Even as the country reeled from its latest disaster, Pakistan began a new push to expel Afghans, with more than 6,300 people crossing the Torkham border point in Nangarhar province Tuesday.
"Given the circumstances, I appeal to the (Pakistan government) to pause the implementation of the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan," UNHCR chief Grandi said.
The Norwegian Refugee Council also cautioned that "forcing Afghans to return will only deepen the crisis".
It is the third major earthquake since the Taliban authorities took power in 2021, but there are even fewer resources for the cash-strapped government's response after the United States slashed assistance to the country when President Donald Trump took office in January.
Even before the earthquake, the United Nations estimated it had obtained less than a third of the funding required for operations countrywide.
In two days, the Taliban government's defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate around 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals.
Fitrat said a camp had been set up in Khas Kunar district to coordinate emergency aid, while two other sites were opened near the epicentre "to oversee the transfer of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors".
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, with the country still recovering from previous disasters.
Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.
Homeless and fearful, Afghan quake survivors sleep in the open
Dara-I-Nur, Afghanistan (AFP) Sept 3, 2025 -
Families huddled hungry and homeless days after a deadly earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan, not daring to set foot in the few remaining buildings for fear an aftershock could bring them down.
The initial powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck remote regions along the border with Pakistan, killing more than 1,400 people, with at least six strong aftershocks and countless smaller tremors.
Some farming villages tucked among the green mountainsides were flattened, with people still under the rubble days later.
Elsewhere, some houses were only partially destroyed, but residents preferred to brave the elements than risk being crushed.
Still haunted by the "terrifying night" when the quake destroyed his house in the village of Dar-i-nur in Nangarhar province, Emran Mohammad Aref said he had since slept with four other family members outside on a rough plastic mat.
"There was a tremor yesterday and there was also one this morning," Aref told AFP.
"Now we have no place to live and we are asking everyone for help."
While those with the means fled the village, residents who had no choice but to stay cobbled together makeshift shelters with whatever they could find among the destruction.
Even in Jalalabad, Nangarhar's provincial capital, which suffered no damage but felt the quake and its aftershocks, "we are very afraid", said Fereshta, a 42-year-old doctor.
"Every time I take a step, I feel like the ground is shaking. We don't stay inside the house and we sleep in the garden, constantly thinking there will be another quake," she said.
- 'Give us shelter' -
Similar scenes are playing out across the affected region, some in the isolated areas of hard-hit Kunar province that are still cut off from aid by landslides caused by the quake and aftershocks.
But in fleeing their homes -- often built on high ground -- and taking refuge in low-lying fields, riverbeds or by roadsides, survivors risk being hit by rockfall if aftershocks strike, warned Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad, a senior official in Kunar's Nurgal district.
"The area is very dangerous, you cannot stay there long or even walk through it," said Yaad.
The United Nations said it has 14,000 tents ready for distribution.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) told AFP it has at least 700 tents available, but cannot deliver them to survivors because of difficult access to the villages.
"Help us, give us shelter, help my children, we have nothing left," pleaded Sorat, a housewife injured in the quake along with her husband and children.
After being pulled from the ruins of her house by rescuers, she was treated in a regional hospital, then sent back to her village, where nothing awaits her, she told AFP.
While waiting for aid, "we are staying in the valley", she said, sitting in her blue all-enveloping burqa on a traditional simple woven bed surrounded by her three small children.
This earthquake, one of the deadliest in Afghanistan in decades, is "the last thing families with young children need in a country where many don't have enough food, and a large portion of the children are already malnourished", the World Food Programme said, adding the situation "is brutal".
Afghanistan, still fragile after decades of war and a prolonged humanitarian crisis, has been rocked by other severe, deadly quakes in recent years -- one in 2023 in western Herat, on the other side of the country near Iran.
That first 6.3-magnitude tremor was followed by at least eight powerful aftershocks and destroyed entire villages.
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