Afghanistan needs medical aid as aftershock kills 5

161
2
Afghanistan needs medical aid as aftershock kills 5

A man is among the destruction after an earthquake in Gayan village, Paktika province, Afghanistan, June 23, 2022. EBRAHIM NOOROOZI AP KABUL Afghanistan does not have enough medical supplies to treat the injured from an earthquake that killed 1,000 people this week, as an aftershock killed five more people on Friday, a senior official said.

The search for survivors from the 6.1 magnitude earthquake that struck early on Wednesday was ended by authorities in remote southeastern mountains, about 160 km southeast of Kabul, near the Pakistani border.

READ MORE: Afghanistan quake kills 1,000, toll expected to rise.

The Friday earthquake, in almost exactly the same place, was magnitude 4.3, according to the US Geological Survey.

About 2,000 people were injured and 10,000 houses were partially or completely destroyed in the Wednesday earthquake, Mohammad Nassim Haqqani, a spokesman for the disaster ministry, told Reuters.

He said that the health ministry doesn't have enough drugs, we need medical aid and other necessities because it's a big disaster.

The epicenter of the Wednesday earthquake was in a region of arid mountains dotted with small settlements that were often the scene of clashes during Afghanistan's decades of war.

A health ministry official said five people were killed in the aftershock but there was no immediate word on the extent of the damage and injuries.

Poor communications and only very basic roads have hampered relief efforts in a country that is struggling with a humanitarian crisis that has deteriorated after the Taliban took over last August, as the US-led international forces withdrew.

Japan, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates all said they planned to send aid on Thursday. Supplies from Pakistan have already crossed the border.

India sent 27 tonnes of supplies on two flights to international aid agencies.

Some 48 hours after the disaster, the search for survivors had been called off, according to Haqqani, who spoke before the aftershock.

He said the search operation had finished.

He didn't elaborate on why. After a long time, people have been pulled alive from the rubble of other earthquakes.

Large parts of South Asia are seismically active because a tectonic plate known as the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.

In 2015, an earthquake struck the remote Afghan northeast, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.