British News Agency

The death of more than 800 people has been confirmed, while fears remain that the toll could be higher. Around 3,000 people were also injured in the quake.

The 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck the mountainous Kunar province, about 30 kilometers northeast of Jalalabad city. The tremor was felt from Kabul in the west to Islamabad, the capital of neighboring Pakistan, near the Kunar border.

Kunar province and neighboring Nangarhar were the hardest-hit areas; entire villages were reduced to rubble, and landslides blocked the main road to the most devastated regions.

The UK’s state broadcaster BBC reported that aid organization World Vision said all villages in Kunar province had been partially or completely destroyed. Residents were trapped under the rubble of their homes. Some waited for rescue teams for hours, but died before they could be saved.

The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest countries, was already dire. The United Nations says more than half of the country’s population requires humanitarian aid to survive.

UN Refugee Agency chief Filippo Grandi urged the international community to support relief efforts.

Grandi wrote on social media platform X: “Death and destruction add to the country’s other challenges, including drought and the forced displacement of millions of Afghans from neighboring countries.”

The Taliban Interior Ministry said the vast majority of victims were in Kunar province. The BBC reported that a senior Taliban official said rescue operations were focusing on finding survivors rather than retrieving bodies from the rubble.