Afghanistan health ministry said that the earthquake death toll reached 2,400 while rescue efforts are being underway to provide relief and rescue to the trapped people.
As per TOLOnew, Naib Rafi village in Zindajan district of Herat, is the most affected by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that left over 2,400 people dead and over 2,000 injured. Around 80 percent of the population of the village lost their lives in the deadly earthquake. The earthquake has affected at least 14 villages in Zindajan as village houses are made of mud in the traditional way.
Afghanistan: Rescue workers on Monday scrambled to pull out survivors, and the dead, from beneath the rubble two days after the northwestern city of Herat and its surroundings were struck by the deadliest earthquakes to rattle Afghanistan in years.
The Taliban administration said at least 2,400 people were killed and many more injured in the quakes, which were among the world’s deadliest this year after tremors in Turkiye and Syria, in which an estimated 50,000 people were killed.
Neighbours Pakistan and Iran have offered to send rescue workers and humanitarian aid, while China’s Red Cross Society offered cash relief aid.
“The operation is still going on, still some people are being pulled out of the rubble,” the spokesman of Herat’s governor, Nissar Ahmad Elyias, told Reuters, adding that more than a dozen villages around Herat were also affected.
Many buildings in Herat city were relatively unaffected, but the mediaeval minarets of its famous mosques sustained some damage, photographs on social media showed.
“Many of our family members have been martyred, including one of my sons, and my other son is also injured,” Herat resident Mir Ahmed told Reuters at a hospital that was treating many survivors.
“Most of the people are under the rubble.”
Hemmed in by mountains, Afghanistan has a history of strong earthquakes, many in the rugged Hindu Kush region bordering Pakistan.
Death tolls often rise when information comes in from more remote parts of a country where decades of war have left infrastructure in a shambles, and relief and rescue operations difficult to organize.
In a statement late on Sunday, the UN Humanitarian Office put the death toll from the quakes at 1,023, with an additional 1,663 people injured, and more than 500 missing. It said all the homes in the Zindajan district in Herat were destroyed.
