‘No One Will Sleep in Their House’

AFP/APP

Herat: “When we went to the village, we passed out and they brought us back to the city unconscious,” said Afghan earthquake survivor Negar from a makeshift aid camp in Herat city, the provincial capital.

Negar further said, “There was the noise of machinery pulling the corpses from the ground. We saw that and it increased our fear and panic. When there are seven or eight hundred families, some of them dead and half of them alive, wouldn’t you be afraid?”

Fifty-year-old Negar could hardly bear a single night in her half-demolished village, for fear of more aftershocks, before she asked to be sent back to the city.

Negar, like many Afghans, goes by one name. She was taken with her family back to her village of Nayeb Rafi in Herat province.

She is one of thousands who have fled their homes after a series of earthquakes with magnitudes measuring between 4.2 and 6.3 jolted western Afghanistan this month, killing at least 1,000 people.

The quake series began on October 7 with a 6.3 tremor, and at least eight powerful aftershocks devastated rural villages northwest of Herat city.

Doctors Without Borders Program Head in Afghanistan Yahya Kalilah told this week that many survivors have been left “panicked and traumatized”.

People are not feeling safe. I will assure you 100 percent, no one will sleep in their house, Yahya added.

The Taliban government informed that more than 1,000 people were killed, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) put the figure at nearly 1,400 by late Saturday.

The WHO reported that the poor, overcrowded environment with limited access to water and winter essentials like warm blankets and clothes will likely lead to an increase in the incidence and severity of infectious diseases.

Providing shelter on a large scale will be a challenge for Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, who seized power in August 2021 and have fractious relations with international aid organisations.

Afghanistan is already suffering a dire humanitarian crisis as winter approaches, with the widespread withdrawal of foreign aid that followed the Taliban’s return to power.