“ Whole households had left ‘: the Afghans describe death and devastation after the earthquake on Sunday

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The voice of Nasrullah Khan breaks while he describes how with his own hands, he buried three children in one tomb and two young men in another after an earthquake struck the mountainous province of the Southeast Afghan of Kunar on Sunday.

Nasrullah, an office employee of Kunar City, traveled six hours in the Dewagul valley in Kunar after the earthquake to help save efforts.

“The first man I met had lost 18 family members,” he said. “The wounded and the dead were lying on the ground without help. In some villages, only two or three people survived in each household. It was the first time in my life, I saw so many corpses.

“Whole households had left.”

In the valleys bordered by mud brick houses, the survivors were carrying bodies on woven civilians. Nasrullah said he saw the bodies of children wrapped in patterned blankets and men dig graves with picks. According to a Taliban spokesperson, Magnidimes 6.0 killed at least 1,400 people and injured more than 3,000 people, with more than 5,400 houses.

Close -up of a young man dressed in blue, with a red and white scarf around his neck, with a bandage rolled around his head.
An injured Afghan sits after getting first aid on Tuesday after the deadly earthquake of magnitude 6 which struck Afghanistan around midnight in Dara Noor, in Jalalabad, in Afghanistan, on September 1. (Sayed Hassib / Reuters)

‘I lost everything’

On Tuesday, a second big earthquake rocked the same region, causing fears of destruction even more destruction in a country paralyzed by poverty, war and narrowing.

Officials said three Kunar villages had been flattened, causing more than 600 deaths. The Ministry of Defense said that 40 flights had evacuated 420 victims of the region while the rescue teams went from villages seriously struck with more distant hamlets.

Gul Bibi, 80, cried, holding a toddler in his arms, next to a house destroyed in the mountain village of Mazar Dara, one of the most striking in the places in the province of Kunar.

“I lost everything,” said Bibi, saying that his family was buried under the mud and the debris of their house. “This grandson has survived.”

Look | Try to help from afar:

Afghan Quebecers sailing around the Taliban to send donations to the victims of earthquakes

The Center for Afghan Women in Montreal is organizing an answer to the earthquake of August 31, which killed more than 1,400 people in Afghanistan, according to the Taliban government in the country.

The United Nations warned that the toll will increase while the victims remained trapped under the rubble.

In Dara-E-Noor, in the province of Nangarhar, Ziarat Gul, 23, said that his uncle’s house collapsed, killing a seven-year-old boy and two girls.

“We took them out with our hands, but they had already left.”

He and his family slept in open fields from the earthquake.

Nasrullah said he had gone to three villages and helped bury 41 bodies, but that everyone could not be put to rest.

“We quickly buried people, before the aftershocks forced us to run fell sites.”

Four small children sit alone on a rock with bags around them
Afghan children sit with their property in the devastated village of Mazar Dara on Tuesday. (Sayed Hassib / Reuters)


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