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The search for debris has ended in Afghanistan after an earthquake shook the country’s southeast a few nights ago. The latest death toll is at least 1,000. Those affected are facing an emergency situation.
With our special correspondent in Paktika province, Sonia Ghezali.
The Taliban regime, overwhelmed, asks the international community for help given the magnitude of the damage – 1,500 houses destroyed or damaged – and the needs on the ground.
48 hours after the deadliest earthquake in the last 20 years in Afghanistan, the population of Paktika province woke up this morning with new tremors, albeit mild. On two occasions, the earth trembled for a few seconds.
slight tremors
The tremors were mild and bear no resemblance to the violence felt two nights ago in this province. Hundreds of villagers lost their mud houses when they collapsed Tuesday night.
They are out in the open, without food, water, blankets or emergency shelter on the cold, wet nights. Supporting and helping these victims of the catastrophe is now an emergency. But aid delivery is a challenge in these rugged mountains.
There, an entire village has been destroyed. Residents of Urgon, the district where RFI’s special correspondent Sonia Ghezali currently works, are organizing to bring food to affected populations by their own means.
“They have no shelter, they have no food”
In the same mountainous district of Urgon, the population is still in shock. Although the earthquake shook violently, the damage is no more important than in the districts of Gayan and Barmal, an hour and a half from here. Since Friday morning, UN trucks have been heading to these two districts.
Najubullah, an emergency operations supervisor, has just returned. “People there are in a state of depression, people are traumatized. They don’t have shelter, they don’t have food, they don’t have water, they don’t have blankets, the only thing they have is the clothes they are wearing. They don’t have anything else. Some have made little shelters out of wooden sticks and pieces of plastic,” he says.
At the Urgon district hospital, a dozen specialist doctors have just arrived as reinforcements. They are all volunteers. Mohamad Qadim comes from the neighboring province of Khost. “Ninety percent of injuries are fractures. That’s why we’ve come here. We’re all a team. There are general surgeons, we have eye surgeons and orthopedic surgeons to work on bone fractures. We’ve come here to help people,” he explains.
All the injured have been airlifted to provincial hospitals. The emergency now is to help the affected populations who have returned to their villages and whose houses have collapsed.
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