At least 800 dead in Afghanistan earthquake

What happened

More than 800 people were killed and at least 2,800 injured after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit mountainous eastern Afghanistan late Sunday, the country's Taliban-led government said Monday. Most of the casualties were in Kunar province, and rescue efforts were hindered by blocked roads to remote villages. The shallow quake's epicenter was about 17 miles from Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan.

Who said what

"There is death in every home, and beneath the rubble of each roof, there are dead bodies," Muhammad Aziz, a laborer from Kunar's hard-hit Nur Gul district, told The Guardian. This was Afghanistan's "third major deadly quake since the Taliban took over in 2021," Reuters said. Sunday's earthquake is "likely to dwarf the scale of the humanitarian needs" caused by a 2023 earthquake that killed at least 1,000 people, the International Rescue Committee said. A temblor in 2022 had a similar death toll.

This latest disaster struck as Afghanistan "has been battling a series of overlapping humanitarian, economic and geopolitical crises," The New York Times said. "Hundreds of hospitals and health care centers have shut down since the Trump administration suspended U.S. foreign aid this spring," and Pakistan and Iran have forcibly returned more than 2 million Afghan refugees this year.

What next?

Afghanistan's government and international aid groups said the death toll was likely to rise — probably to double or triple the current estimates, according to the United Nations humanitarian affairs office. "There is a small window — up to 72 hours — to rescue those trapped under the rubble still alive," The Wall Street Journal said.

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