A powerful earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan late Sunday night, leaving a trail of devastation across remote villages and mountain communities.
By Monday morning, officials confirmed that at least 622 people had been killed and over 1,500 injured, with the toll expected to rise as rescue efforts continue.
The magnitude 6.0 tremor, recorded just before midnight local time, shook the ground across parts of Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, flattening homes, burying families in rubble, and turning already-fragile mountain communities into disaster zones.
According to Sharafat Zaman, a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Health Ministry, “several villages have been completely destroyed.”
He added that rescue operations were still ongoing, with medics and disaster officials deployed from Kunar, Nangarhar, and even the capital, Kabul.
“The figures for martyrs and injured are changing,” Zaman said, hinting that the full scale of the disaster is yet to unfold.
Footage from TOLOnews showed heart-wrenching scenes of survivors digging through debris with bare hands, searching for loved ones.
Injured villagers were airlifted by military helicopters to the Nangarhar Regional Hospital, as local health facilities in Kunar were overwhelmed.
The Afghan Defence Ministry confirmed that it had deployed 30 doctors and 800kg of medicine to the affected region.
Taliban disaster management chief Mullah Nooruddin Turab also arrived in Kunar to oversee relief operations.
The quake struck in a particularly remote and mountainous region, complicating rescue and aid efforts.
Many of the hardest-hit areas, including Nur Gul, Soki, Watpur, Manogi, and Chapadare districts, remain largely cut off, with some villages accessible only by air.
“This is a remote, mountainous region,” said Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Lahore, Pakistan. “Locals are digging people out of rubble with their hands. The death toll will likely go up.”
Afghanistan, sitting on a complex seismic fault line, has a long history of deadly earthquakes. Just last year, over 2,000 people died in a magnitude 6.3 quake in Herat, and in 2022, another tremor killed 1,000 people in the east.
Sunday night’s quake once again laid bare the country’s vulnerability.
In Jalalabad, the nearest major city to the quake’s epicenter, residents were jolted awake by violent shaking.
Homes built with mud bricks and wood, typical in rural Afghanistan, crumbled within seconds.
Jalalabad, home to over 300,000 people, is now acting as a logistics hub for the relief efforts.
Helicopters carrying the injured and supplies fly in and out as the city’s hospitals brace for more casualties.
Humanitarian agencies are now calling for immediate international assistance.
With communication lines down in many affected areas, and infrastructure limited, there’s growing concern that survivors trapped under debris may not be found in time.
As rescue teams work against the clock, the people of eastern Afghanistan face yet another test of resilience, one marked by grief, destruction and uncertainty.
