A powerful earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan overnight, collapsing homes and leaving more than 800 people dead and thousands injured, according to Taliban authorities.
Rescue operations continued into Monday evening as emergency teams and local residents struggled to pull survivors from the rubble.
It could be recalled that Diaspora Digital Media reported that the 6.0-magnitude quake hit just before midnight, with tremors felt as far as Kabul and neighboring Islamabad, Pakistan.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the quake’s epicenter was about 27 kilometers from Jalalabad, in Kunar province, at a depth of roughly eight kilometers a shallow point that made the destruction more severe.
The brunt of the casualties was reported in Kunar province, where Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that at least 800 people were killed and more than 2,500 others injured.
Neighboring Nangarhar province recorded 12 deaths and 255 injuries, while another 58 people were reported injured in Laghman province.
“The search operation is still going on. Many people are stuck under the rubble of their roofs,” said Ehsanullah Ehsan, the head of disaster management in Kunar, warning that the death toll could rise further.
In villages like Wadir in Kunar’s Nurgal district, residents joined emergency responders, often digging through collapsed mud-brick houses with their bare hands.
Helicopters evacuated scores of the wounded to Jalalabad hospitals, where facilities were overwhelmed.
One survivor, 22-year-old Zafar Khan Gojar, described how his home collapsed during the quake.
“The rooms and walls fell in, killing some children and injuring others,” he said as his brother, whose leg was broken, received treatment.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed solidarity with Afghans, saying he was “deeply saddened” by the scale of the disaster.
Pope Leo XIV also conveyed his condolences through a Vatican statement, calling the loss of life “a great human tragedy.”
But beyond grief, fear and tension gripped local communities. “Children and women were screaming.
We had never experienced anything like this in our lives,” said Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad, a local official in Nurgal. Many victims were among Afghans recently deported from Pakistan and Iran, now left without homes or livelihoods.
Afghanistan sits on a major tectonic fault line, making it highly vulnerable to quakes.
In recent years, deadly tremors in Paktika (2022) and Herat (2023) killed thousands and displaced tens of thousands.
Years of war, poverty, and dwindling international aid since the Taliban takeover in 2021 have left Afghanistan ill-prepared for disasters of this scale.
The UN estimates that 85 percent of Afghans survive on less than a dollar a day, and many live in fragile mud-brick houses prone to collapse.
As night fell on Monday, blocked roads and limited resources hampered relief efforts, raising fears that the true toll of the disaster may not be known for days.
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