“We ask from the Islamic Emirate and the whole country to come forward and help us,” said a survivor who gave his name as Hakimullah. “We are with nothing and have nothing, not even a tent to live in.”
The scenes underscored how the magnitude 6 quake has struck a country that was already nearly on its knees from multiple humanitarian crises.
The quake took the lives of 1,000 people, according to the state-run Bakhtar News Agency, which also reported an estimated 1,500 more were injured. In the first independent count, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said around 770 people had been killed in Paktika and neighboring Khost province.
It’s not clear how the totals were arrived at, given the difficulties of accessing and communicating with the affected villages. Either grim toll would make the quake Afghanistan’s deadliest in two decades, and officials continued to warn the number could still rise.
Since the Taliban took over in August amid the U.S and NATO withdrawal, the world pulled back financing and development aid that had been keeping the country afloat. The economy collapsed, leaving millions unable to afford food; many medical facilities shut down, making treatment harder to find. Nearly half the population of 38 million faces crisis levels of food insecurity.
Many aid and development agencies also left after the Taliban seizure of power. The U.N. and remaining agencies said they were moving blankets, food, tents, and medical teams to the area.
But they are over-stretched, and U.N. agencies are facing a $3 billion funding shortfall for Afghanistan this year. That means there will be difficult decisions about who gets aid, said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency.
Local medical centers, already struggling to deal with malnutrition cases, were now overwhelmed with people injured by the quake, said Adnan Junaid, the International Rescue Committee vice president for Asia.
“The toll this disaster will have on the local communities ... is catastrophic, and the impact the earthquake will have on the already stretched humanitarian response in Afghanistan is a grave cause for concern,” Junaid said.
The Defense Ministry, which leads the Taliban emergency effort, said it sent 22 helicopter flights on Wednesday transporting wounded and taking supplies, along with several more Thursday.
Still, the Taliban’s resources have been gutted by the economic crisis. Made up of insurgents who fought for 20 years against the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban have also struggled to make the transition to governing.
On Wednesday, a U.N. official said the government had not requested that the world body mobilize international search-and-rescue teams or obtain equipment from neighboring countries, despite a rare plea from the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzadah, for help from the world.
Trucks of food and other necessities arrived from Pakistan, and planes full of humanitarian aid landed from Iran and Qatar, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter. India said it sent a technical team to its embassy in Kabul to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, but it didn't give details on the team or the relief material being sent.
Pakistan also opened several nearby border crossings to allow those affected by the disaster to cross, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sherif said in a call with the Taliban Prime Minister Mullah Hasan Akhund.
Obtaining more direct international help may be more difficult: Many countries, including the U.S., funnel humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through the U.N. and other organizations to avoid putting money in the Taliban's hands, wary of dealing with the group, which has issued a flurry of repressive edicts curtailing the rights of women and girls and the press.
Germany, Norway and several other countries announced they were sending aid for the quake, but underscored that they would work only through U.N. agencies, not with the Taliban.
In a news bulletin Thursday, Afghanistan state television made a point to acknowledge that President Joe Biden of the United States — their one-time enemy — offered condolences over the earthquake and had promised aid. Biden on Wednesday ordered the U.S. international aid agency and its partners to “assess” options for helping the victims, a White House statement said.
U.N. deputy special representative for Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov, told the U.N. Security Council in a video briefing he intends to visit quake-hit areas on Friday and “to meet with affected families, first-hand responders, including women’s civil society groups who are working to ensure that assistance reaches women and girls, and to support overall relief efforts.”
In Paktika province, the quake shook a region of deep poverty, where residents scrape out in a living in the few fertile areas among the rough mountains. Roads are so difficult that some villages in Gayan District took a full day to reach from Kabul, though it is only 175 kilometers (110 miles away.)
One 6-year-old boy in Gayan wept as he said his parents, two sisters and a brother were all dead. He had fled the ruins of his own home and took refuge with the neighbors.
While modern buildings withstand magnitude 6 earthquakes elsewhere, Afghanistan’s mud-brick homes and landslide-prone mountains make such quakes more dangerous.
One man, Rahim Jan, stood inside the few standing mud-brick walls of his home with the toppled roof timbers all around him.
“It is destroyed completely, all my belongings are gone,” he said. “I have lost 12 members of my family in this house.”
___
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Lee Keath in Cairo, and Rahim Faiez and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Afghans stand by the bodies of relatives killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans stand by the bodies of relatives killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans pray for relatives killed in an earthquake to a burial site l in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans pray for relatives killed in an earthquake to a burial site l in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
A man stands among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
A man stands among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Men stand around the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Men stand around the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
A man stands among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
A man stands among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
An Afghan sits by the rubble of his house earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
An Afghan sits by the rubble of his house earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans stand among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans stand among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Men stand around the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Men stand around the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Men stand around the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Men stand around the bodies of people killed in an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
In this photo released by Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, a convoy of trucks carrying relief good including tents, blankets and emergency medicines for Afghanistan's earthquake hit areas, prepare to leave for Afghanistan at a warehouse in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. (National Disaster Management Authority via AP)
Credit: Uncredited
In this photo released by Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, a convoy of trucks carrying relief good including tents, blankets and emergency medicines for Afghanistan's earthquake hit areas, prepare to leave for Afghanistan at a warehouse in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. (National Disaster Management Authority via AP)
Credit: Uncredited
Credit: Uncredited
Afghans sift through destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans sift through destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghan children stand in front of a tent after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghan children stand in front of a tent after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
A man stands among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
A man stands among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans stand among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans stand among destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans carry a relative killed in an earthquake to a burial site l in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Afghans carry a relative killed in an earthquake to a burial site l in Gayan village, in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 23, 2022. A powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, flattening stone and mud-brick homes in the country's deadliest quake in two decades, the state-run news agency reported. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi)
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
Credit: Ebrahim Noroozi
