Afghanistan Earthquake Death Toll Nears 1,100, Rescue Operation Continues

Last Updated:September 02, 2025, 09:44 IST

A powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan killed at least 1,100 people and injured over 3,500, with villages flattened and rescuers struggling to reach remote areas.

An man Afghan walks past a damaged house following earthquakes in the Mazar Dara village of Nurgal, a district of the Kunar Province, in Eastern Afghanistan (AFP)

One of Afghanistan’s worst earthquakes on Sunday evening killed at least 1,100 people and left another 3,500 people injured, Abdul Jabbar Behir, head of the Afghan Media and Research Centre, said in an interview with Al Arabiya, citing local authorities and reports from hard-to-reach areas.

The 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck just before midnight Sunday, with the worst of the destruction in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

Rescuers were battling to reach remote mountainous areas cut off from mobile networks along the Pakistani border, where mudbrick homes dotting the slopes collapsed in the quake.

The dead, some of them children, were wrapped in white shrouds by villagers who prayed over their bodies before burying them, while helicopters ferried the wounded to hospitals.

Military rescue teams fanned out across the region, Reuters quoted the country’s defence ministry as saying, with 40 flights carrying away 420 wounded and dead.

The quake razed three villages in Kunar, with substantial damage in many others, authorities said.

Some villagers sat weeping amid the piled ruins of their homes. Others began laboriously clearing the debris by hand, or carried out the injured on makeshift stretchers.

It was Afghanistan’s third major deadly quake since the Taliban took over in 2021 as foreign forces withdrew, triggering a cut to the international funding that formed the bulk of the government’s finances.

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said India had delivered 1,000 family tents to Kabul and was moving 15 tonnes of food material to Kunar, with more relief material to be sent from India starting Tuesday.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said its mission in Afghanistan was preparing to help those in areas devastated by the quake.

Pope Leo also sent condolences for the dead.

Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.

A 6.1-magnitude earthquake that killed 1,000 people in the eastern region in 2022 was the first major natural disaster faced by the Taliban government.

News world Afghanistan Earthquake Death Toll Nears 1,100, Rescue Operation Continues

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