A massive rescue effort is underway in Afghanistan after a powerful earthquake struck late Sunday, toppling homes onto sleeping families in a remote mountainous region and killing more than 800 people, Taliban authorities said. The toll is expected to rise as search operations continue.
The 6.0-magnitude quake struck just before midnight, shaking buildings as far away as Kabul and Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. The epicentre was located about 27 kilometres from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, according to the US Geological Survey, which reported the tremor at a depth of eight kilometres.
Casualties have been reported across at least five provinces. In Kunar, near the epicentre, around 800 people were confirmed dead and 2,500 injured, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. In neighbouring Nangarhar province, 12 deaths and 255 injuries were recorded, while at least 58 people were hurt in Laghman province.
Rescuers, assisted by local residents, continued digging through rubble in devastated villages such as Wadir in Kunar’s Nurgal district, often with bare hands. Many of the injured were evacuated by helicopter to hospitals in Jalalabad.
“The rooms and walls collapsed… killing some children and injuring others,” said Zafar Khan Gojar, a 22-year-old survivor brought to Jalalabad with his injured brother.
Aid agencies warned that some of the hardest-hit communities remain cut off by blocked roads, nearly 20 hours after the quake. The UN migration agency said accessibility remains a critical challenge.
“There is a lot of fear and tension… Children and women were screaming. We had never experienced anything like this in our lives,” said Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad, an official in Nurgal district.
The disaster comes as Afghanistan grapples with overlapping humanitarian crises. Decades of war, widespread poverty, and dwindling foreign aid since the Taliban takeover in 2021 have left the country ill-equipped to handle emergencies. Around 85 percent of Afghans live on less than a dollar a day, according to the UN Development Programme.
International condolences poured in on Monday. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed “full solidarity with the people of Afghanistan,” while Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened by the significant loss of life.”
Afghanistan sits in a seismically active region where the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates collide. Past earthquakes have caused heavy losses, including the October 2023 tremor in Herat that killed more than 1,500 people, and a 2022 quake in Paktika that left over 1,000 dead.
Seismologist Brian Baptie of the British Geological Survey said the region’s history of strong tremors, combined with vulnerable mud-brick housing, often leads to “significant loss of life” when disasters strike.
