Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - A senior official said that Afghanistan doesn't have enough medical supplies to treat the people who...
 |
| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - A senior official said that Afghanistan doesn't have enough medical supplies to treat the people who were hurt in this week's earthquake, which killed more than 1,000 people. An aftershock on Friday killed five more people.
Authorities had already stopped looking for survivors of the 6.1-magnitude earthquake that hit early Wednesday morning near the Pakistani border, about 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Kabul, the capital. The quake happened near the Pakistani border, about 100 miles southeast of Kabul.
The U.S. Geological Survey said that the aftershock on Friday, which happened almost in the same spot, had a magnitude of 4.3. A person from the health ministry said that it killed five people, but there was no information right away about how many people were hurt or how much damage was done.
The United Nations said on Friday that it is certain that 1,036 people have died.
Mohammad Nassim Haqqani, a spokesman for Afghanistan's disaster ministry, told Reuters that the earthquake on Wednesday hurt about 2,000 people and damaged or destroyed 10,000 homes.
He said, "The Health Ministry doesn't have enough medicines." "It's a big disaster, so we need help with medicine and other things."
The earthquake's centre was in a region of dry, mountainous land with a few small towns. This area saw a lot of fighting during Afghanistan's long war.
Poor communication and very basic roads have made it hard to help people in a country that is facing a humanitarian crisis that got much worse after the Taliban took over in August and the U.S. and other international forces left.
TALIBAN TEST
The disaster is a big test for the hard-line Islamist rulers, who have been mostly alone, shunned by many because of concerns about human rights, and cut off from much direct international help because of sanctions.
Thursday, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates all said they would send help. The border has already been crossed by goods from Pakistan.
India, which has tense relations with the Taliban, said that it had sent 27 tonnes of supplies to international aid groups on two flights.
It was said that the UNHCR, which is in charge of helping refugees, had sent tonnes of supplies and experts to help with the relief effort.
"Four decades of war and instability in Afghanistan have put millions of people on the edge of hunger and death," said Shabia Mantoo, the country's spokesperson, on Friday.
The World Health Organization, which is also part of the United Nations, has also warned that the disaster could make it more likely for cholera to spread across Afghanistan.
Dr. Dapeng Luo, cholera's representative in Afghanistan, said that about 500,000 people were already sick with diarrhoea in May. Diarrhea is one of the main signs of cholera.
Before the aftershock on Friday, a disaster official named Haqqani said that the search for survivors had been stopped 48 hours after the earthquake.
He said, "The search operation is over," but he didn't explain why. People have been pulled alive from earthquake rubble for much longer times in other places.
There are a lot of earthquakes in large parts of South Asia because the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.
In 2015, a big earthquake hit the remote northeast of Afghanistan, killing hundreds of people there and in nearby northern Pakistan.
