• Over 2,800 injured in 6.0-magnitude tremor
• Shocks felt in five provinces of Afghanistan, many parts of Pakistan
• Officials fear casualties may rise as rescue efforts hampered by risk of landslides and rock slides after recent rains
• UN chief, PM Shehbaz, President Zardari express condolences; KP govt decides to immediately send medicines
NURGAL: A massive rescue operation was underway in Afghanistan on Monday, after a strong earthquake and multiple aftershocks collapsed homes onto sleeping families in a remote, mountainous region, killing more than 800 people, according to the Taliban authorities.
The 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck just before midnight, rattling buildings from Kabul to Islamabad.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) also recorded at least five aftershocks throughout the night.
Casualties and destruction swept across at least five provinces of Afghanistan, while tremors were also recorded in the two province of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, besides the federal capital of Islamabad.
Near the epicentre in eastern Afghanistan, around 800 people were killed and 2,800 injured in remote Kunar province alone, chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
Another 12 people were killed and 255 injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province, while 58 people were injured in Laghman province.
In Wadir village in the hard-hit district of Nurgal, dozens of people joined the effort to pull people from the rubble of destroyed or severely damaged homes more than 12 hours after the initial earthquake, AFP journalists saw.
The epicentre was about 27km from the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, according to the USGS, which said it struck just eight kilometres below the Earth’s surface. Such relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially since the majority of Afghans live in low-rise, mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.
Some of the most severely impacted villages in remote Kunar provinces “remain inaccessible due to road blockages”, the UN migration agency warned.
Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, which border Pakistan, were also hit by flooding in recent days, authorities said.
Rescuers were battling to reach remote mountainous areas cut off from mobile networks along the border, where mudbrick homes dotting the slopes collapsed in the quake.
“The area of the earthquake was affected by heavy rain in the last 24-48 hours as well, so the risk of landslides and rock slides is also quite significant — that is why many of the roads are impassable,” Kate Carey, an officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told Reuters.
Rescue teams and authorities are trying to dispose of animal carcasses quickly so as to minimise the risk of contamination to water resources, Carey said.
Casualties could rise as rescue teams access more isolated locations, authorities said.
Taliban’s defence ministry said at least 40 flight sorties had been carried out on Monday.
A member of the agricultural department in Nurgal said people had rushed to clear blocked roads in the hours after the earthquake, but that badly affected areas were remote and had limited telecoms networks.
“There is a lot of fear and tension… Children and women were screaming. We had never experienced anything like this in our lives,” Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad said.
He said that many living in quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghan refugees who have returned to the country from Pakistan and Iran after decades. “They wanted to build their homes here.”
Condolences pour in
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed deep condolences, on behalf of the people of Pakistan, to the families who lost their loved ones in the earthquake. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government decided to immediately dispatch a consignment of essential medicines to earthquake-stricken regions of Afghanistan, with Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur announcing that the provincial government was fully prepared to also deploy medical staff.
Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2025
