Kabul
\nThe death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend rose sharply to more than 2,200 on Thursday, according to a new toll, making it the deadliest in decades to hit the country.
\nThe vast majority of those killed in the magnitude-6.0 earthquake that jolted the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late on Sunday were in Kunar province, where 2,205 people died and 3,640 were injured, according to a Taliban government toll.
\nAnother 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.
\n\u201cHundreds of bodies have been recovered from destroyed houses during search and rescue operations,\u201d deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat wrote on X on Thursday, announcing the new toll, adding that \u201crescue efforts are still ongoing\u201d.
\nLimited 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.
\nVarious 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.
\nA fight broke out over food when some finally reached the field in Mazar Dara where hundreds of people were camped out, little aid having reached them.
\n\u201cYesterday, some people brought some food, everyone flooded on them, people are starving, we haven\u00b4t had anything to eat for a long time,\u201d Zahir Khan Safi, 48, told AFP.
\n\u2018Every hour counts\u2019
\nPoor infrastructure in the impoverished country, still fragile from four decades of war, has also stymied the emergency response.
\nThe World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that local healthcare services were \u201cunder immense strain\u201d, with shortages of trauma supplies, medicines and staff.
\nThe agency has appealed for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services and supply distribution.
\n\u201cEvery hour counts,\u201d said WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan Jamshed Tanoli. \u201cHospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything.\u201d
\nThe loss of US foreign aid to the country in January this year has exacerbated the rapid depletion of emergency stockpiles and logistical resources.
\nNGOs and the UN have warned that the earthquake creates a crisis within a crisis, with cash-strapped Afghanistan already contending with overlapping humanitarian disasters.
\nFilippo Grandi, head of the UN\u2019s refugee agency, said the quake had \u201caffected more than 500,000 people\u201d in eastern Afghanistan.
\nThe 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\u2019s 2021 takeover.
\nEven 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kabul The death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend rose sharply to more than 2,200 on Thursday, 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-501084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n