The Taliban government in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that the death toll from the earthquake in eastern Afghanistan has crossed 1,400, with more than 3,000 people injured. The numbers, given by government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, were only for Kunar province.
The 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck late Sunday night across several provinces. It destroyed villages and left people trapped under collapsed houses made mostly of mud bricks and wood. The difficult terrain has slowed rescue efforts, with Taliban authorities air-dropping commandos to evacuate the injured from areas where helicopters cannot land.
Why was the Afghanistan earthquake so deadly?
The earthquake hit just before midnight on Sunday in a mountainous region near Jalalabad, close to the Pakistan border. Although its magnitude was 6.0, the epicentre was shallow at 8 km below the ground, which caused strong shaking on the surface and aftershocks.
Indrika Ratwatte, the UN’s resident coordinator for Afghanistan, told news agency AP that when the walls of mud and wooden homes collapse, the roof falls on the occupants, leading to injury or death. He added that while the area has a low population density, the timing of the quake meant everyone was asleep.
A region prone to earthquakes
The affected area lies in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush ranges, which are seismically active due to the collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. This has produced some of the most destructive earthquakes in the region, including the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal.
Afghanistan has also faced repeated earthquakes, particularly in the eastern belt. In October 2023, an earthquake killed more than 1,500 people. In 2022, another killed over 1,000.
For comparison, the 2011 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand was of a similar magnitude and even shallower, yet it caused 185 deaths in a city setting. In Afghanistan, scattered rural settlements faced hundreds of deaths, showing a clear contrast.
Rural construction adds to risk
In rural Afghanistan, people rely on natural materials such as stone and wood for building homes, as they cannot afford manufactured materials. These houses are built without engineered designs, building codes or professional standards that provide safety in other countries.
A common form of construction uses mud bricks or stone masonry in what is called "monolithic" style. Such structures cannot withstand the side-to-side movement of earthquakes. As a result, buildings collapse quickly and crush people inside.
Crisis within a crisis
It is the third major earthquake since the Taliban seized power in 2021, and the latest crisis to beset Afghanistan, which is reeling from deep cuts to aid funding, a weak economy, and millions of people forcibly returned from Iran and Pakistan.
Aid for Afghanistan is also limited as global crises compete for attention and donor countries reduce their budgets.
"Less international aid means fewer ambulances, fewer doctors, fewer nurses, fewer midwives to send into the battered farming communities of Afghanistan's mountainous east," Arthur Comon, deputy director of operations at the NGO Première Urgence Internationale (PUI) was quoted as saying by the news agency AFP.
"This earthquake is a crisis within a crisis," United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte told AFP.
According to Ratwatte, funding cuts have led to the shutdown of 400 health facilities.
The United States had been Afghanistan’s largest donor, giving $3.71 billion in aid since the Taliban takeover in 2021, but in January it reduced its support to only a fraction of that amount.
“The Americans had put the country on a drip feed, and then pulled it out before the patient was healed,” said a source at a French NGO.