Afghanistan earthquake 2025 struck just after midnight on Monday, killing at least 812 people and injuring 2,800 across Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. Rescue teams rushed into remote mountain areas near the Pakistani border, where mudbrick homes collapsed and entire villages vanished. Helicopters lifted the wounded from rubble, while military flights carried bodies and survivors to hospitals.
Sharafat Zaman, the health ministry’s spokesperson, pleaded for international support. “We need it because here lots of people lost their lives and houses,” he told Reuters. Zabihullah Mujahid, a senior Taliban spokesman, confirmed the death toll and warned that numbers could rise as rescuers reached blocked communities.
The disaster hit a country already in crisis. Since 2021, foreign aid has plummeted after the Taliban returned to power. Humanitarian funding fell from $3.8 billion in 2022 to just $767 million this year. The aid cuts, combined with forced deportations of Afghans from neighboring states, left Afghanistan with fewer resources to respond.
Emergency teams faced collapsed villages in Kunar, where 610 people died, and widespread destruction in Nangarhar, where 12 more perished. The defense ministry said 40 flights evacuated 420 wounded and dead. Officials confirmed that three villages in Kunar were completely destroyed.
International responses remained limited. Afghanistan’s foreign office admitted no governments had offered direct rescue or relief help. China pledged support “according to Afghanistan’s needs and within its capacity.” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres wrote on X that the UN mission in Afghanistan was preparing to assist quake-hit areas.
Humanitarian groups described the event as another chapter in a “forgotten crisis.” They pointed out that donor frustration with Taliban restrictions on women, including female aid workers, further reduced assistance. Almost two years after a deadly quake in Herat, many survivors there still live in temporary shelters. Now, another tragedy leaves tens of thousands without homes.
Afghanistan lies in a region prone to violent seismic activity. The Hindu Kush mountain range sits on the fault line where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide. In 2022, a 6.1 quake killed more than 1,000 people in the east. The latest tremor, measuring magnitude 6, struck at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers, magnifying its impact on fragile mud structures.
The Afghanistan earthquake 2025 has again exposed the fragility of a country caught between political isolation and natural disasters. Without major international support, rescue efforts risk falling short, leaving survivors to rebuild with little more than hope.
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