The death toll from a violent magnitude 6 earthquake that struck a series of towns in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, near the city of Jalalabad, has risen to over 800, according to a new report from the authorities. More than 1,500 people are reported injured.
Taliban government officials have urgently called on humanitarian organizations to assist rescue operations in the remote, mountainous areas worst affected. The Kunar provincial police chief told the BBC that roads to the area are blocked due to landslides triggered by both flooding and the earthquake’s aftershocks. With limited resources, Taliban officials say they are requesting international aid organizations to provide helicopters to reach the impacted zones.
At the provincial hospital in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar, the chief physician, Dr. Muladad, reported the facility received “one patient every five minutes” throughout the night following the severe quake that hit eastern Afghanistan. He stated the entire hospital is full of wounded, and with beds exhausted, patients are being forced to lie on the floor. Dr. Muladad described the situation as an unexpected “crisis” and has declared a hospital emergency. He confirmed that 188 injured, including women and children, had been brought to the health center in recent hours. While only four bodies have been delivered to his facility, dozens of victims have been transported to other local clinics. Nearly 250 injured have been transferred to the main hospital in the neighboring Nangahar province.
The magnitude 6.0 quake struck eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border on Sunday night, according to local authorities. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the epicenter was 42 kilometers from Jalalabad, occurring at a depth of 8 kilometers at 11:47 PM local time. Journalists from Agence France-Presse felt the tremors in Kabul for several seconds, as well as in Islamabad, Pakistan, some 370 kilometers away.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. This event follows a magnitude 6.3 quake in October 2023, which the Taliban government estimated killed 4,000 people—making it the deadliest natural disaster in the country’s recent history. A magnitude 5.9 earthquake in June 2022 killed over 1,000 people in Paktika province, and a magnitude 7.5 quake in 2015 killed over 380 people in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.