A magnitude-6.0 earthquake hit the mountainous region bordering Pakistan on Sunday, leaving residents huddled in the open air for fear of powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to pull people from under flattened buildings.
The earthquake killed more than 1,400 people and injured over 3,300, Taliban authorities said, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country.
The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces.
In Kunar's Nurgal district, victims remained trapped under the rubble and were difficult to rescue, local official Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad told AFP on Wednesday.
"There are some villages which have still not received aid," he said.
Landslides caused by the earthquake stymied access to already isolated villages.
The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of their aid teams "had to walk for 20 kilometres (12 miles) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members".
The World Health Organization warned the number of casualties from the earthquake was expected to rise, "as many remain trapped in destroyed buildings".
- 'Normalise' survivors' lives -
In two days, the Taliban government's defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate some 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals.
In the Mazar Dara village of Kunar, a small mobile clinic was deployed to provide emergency care to the injured, but no tents were set up to shelter survivors, an AFP correspondent said.
On Tuesday, a defence ministry commission said it had instructed "the relevant institutions to take measures in all areas to normalise the lives of the earthquake victims", without providing further details on the plans to do so.
Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said a camp had been set up in Khas Kunar district to coordinate emergency aid, while two other centres were opened near the epicentre "to oversee the transfer of the injured, the burial of the dead, and the rescue of survivors".
According to the United Nations, hundreds of thousands of people could be affected by the disaster.
Multiple countries have pledged assistance but NGOs and the UN have voiced alarm that funding shortfalls after massive aid cuts threaten the response in one of the poorest countries in the world.
After decades of conflict, Afghanistan is facing endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in the years since the Taliban takeover in 2021.
"This earthquake could not have come at a worse time," said Jagan Chapagain, IFRC Secretary General in a statement late Tuesday.
"The disaster not only brings immediate suffering but also deepens Afghanistan's already fragile humanitarian crisis."
Aftershocks rumble quake-hit Afghanistan as death toll tops 1,400
Mazar Dara, Afghanistan (AFP) Sept 2, 2025 -
Strong aftershocks to a powerful earthquake that killed more than 1,400 people at the weekend rattled eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday as survivors in remote hard-hit villages prepared for another night without shelter.
Temporary shelters had not yet reached the Mazar Dara area of Kunar province, an AFP journalist said, with roads still blocked to the remote, mountainous region bordering Pakistan where the worst of the earthquake was felt.
"There is no food... there is nothing, everything has been buried in the rubble," Nurgal district official Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad told AFP.
Residents, including elderly people and children were "in the open air" with little to protect them from wet weather, he said, adding that "we still feel strong aftershocks".
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake jolted the region near the epicentre of the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that hit late Sunday night -- one of at least six aftershocks recorded by the US Geological Survey.
"These aftershocks are constant, but they have not caused any casualties yet," Ehsanullah Ehsan, the disaster management spokesman in Kunar, told AFP.
The number of victims from Sunday's earthquake has mounted steadily, with 1,411 people dead and 3,124 injured in Kunar alone, chief Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday, making it one of the deadliest to hit the country in decades.
Another dozen people were killed and hundreds injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province.
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with dwindling aid since the Taliban seized power in 2021, undermining its ability to respond to disasters.
The devastation could affect "hundreds of thousands", said United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan Indrika Ratwatte.
Rescuers searched through the night and all day for survivors in the rubble of homes flattened in Kunar, where more than 5,400 houses were destroyed, government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said.
The European Union said it was sending 130 tonnes of emergency supplies and providing one million euros ($1.2 million) to help victims of the deadly quake.
The bloc has become one of the key aid donors to Afghanistan after the United States -- previously the country's largest aid provider -- cut all but a slice of its assistance after President Donald Trump took office in January.
The aid cuts risk impeding the response to the earthquake, sector experts told AFP, in a country already facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises after decades of conflict.
"The scale of need far exceeds current resources," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said, noting that funding cuts had hit humanitarian air services, "limiting access to remote communities".
IFRC said it had launched an emergency appeal for 25 million Swiss francs ($31 million) to help with the earthquake response and recovery, as various countries pledged to send support.
As Taliban military helicopters flew in food and continued to transport victims, residents buried their dead, including children, wrapping them in white shrouds and praying over their bodies before laying them to rest.
- 'Find their families' -
Sunday's earthquake epicentre was about 27 kilometres (17 miles) from Jalalabad, according to the USGS, and just eight kilometres below the Earth's surface.
Such relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially as the majority of Afghans live in mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.
Many of those living in the quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghans forced back to the country from Iran and Pakistan in recent years, many coming through the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province.
Rahmatullah Khaksar, who heads the emergency ward at a hospital in Jalalabad, Nangarhar's provincial capital, said they had received 600 injured since Sunday night.
"Most of the patients were trauma patients. They were hit on the head, back, abdomen and legs," he told AFP, adding they had cleared a ward for unidentified patients "so they will stay there until they find their families".
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range near the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates.
Western Herat province was devastated in October 2023 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.
A 5.9-magnitude quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.
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