shock and despair after whole villages have destroyed

Just before midnight Sunday, Matiullah Shahab woke up to find his house in the distant province of Kunar in Afghanistan.

An earthquake measuring 6.0 hit eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 800 people, according to the UN.

Even if the epicenter of the earthquake was 16 km away, the whole village of Shahab d’Asadabad trembled. The 23 members of the family who live with him lacked their rooms as they feared that the walls fall on it and stayed awake overnight in their garden. “We were all afraid,” he said.

The regions most affected by the earthquake were the provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar, but it was felt as far as Kabul and in the capital of neighboring Pakistan Islamabad.

When Day broke, Matiullah – who is an independent and human rights journalist – led from his home to try to reach the remote mountainous area of ​​the Quake epicenter.

He said he had to get out of his car and walk for two hours before arriving in the most affected villages because there were rocks on the road.

He arrived in the village of Andarlachak to find several young children treated with doctors in the street. A pair of toddlers lay on a stretcher with bruises on their chest and faces.

Other children were wrapped in white sheets. Some 79 people died in this village only.

“I saw a lot of corpses,” Matiullah told the BBC. “I felt the replicas 17 times.”

Matiullah has helped the local population to dig graves for the many deceased.

“The villages I visited were destroyed,” he said. A man told Shabab that his wife and four children died. But most were too shocked to speak.

“The faces of people were covered with dust and there was silence,” he said. “They were like robots – no one could talk about it.”

Due to blocked roads, rescue operations by the Taliban government have relied on helicopters to reach mountain villages. But the distant and mountainous terrain means that certain places remain inaccessible, while there are relationships of people who die under the rubble while waiting for rescue.

Matiullah says that volunteers were trying to save people trapped and saw two women from a destroyed house.

“They brought them out, injured and they are now in the hospital,” he said. He was not allowed to take photos of the rescue operation because the Taliban did not allow photos of women.

Many residents are now sleeping in the open air and need tents, adds Matiullah.

Another resident of the Kunar Sokai district, Ezzatullah Safi, indicates that part of his house collapsed in the earthquake.

“I woke up with the cries of children, women and animals,” he said to the BBC.

“The earthquake was intense, and the night looked like a small apocalypse. Strong winds followed the tremors, with light rain falling. My children clung to me, crying with fear. The dust filled the air.

“The mobile network fell immediately. We could not contact parents. With the damaged house and no electricity, we relied on the light of our phones.”

He said that government helicopters arrived in the morning and transported mountain injuries to Kunar’s main highway, where they were transferred by vehicles to clinics.

“There is a strong atmosphere of sorrow here,” notes Ezzatullah.

“(Electricity has come out, the markets have remained closed all day. Some areas are still inaccessible – villages away at five to six in the mountains.”

Additional reports by Iftikhar Khan