Searches in the rubble have been completed in Afghanistan after the earthquake that struck the south-east of the country two nights ago. The latest assessment reports at least a thousand victims. The victims face an emergency situation.
With our special correspondent in the province of Paktika, Sonia Ghezali
The Taliban regime, overwhelmed, is calling for help from the international community given the scale of the damage – 1,500 houses destroyed or damaged – and the needs on the spot.
48 hours later deadliest earthquake of the last twenty years in Afghanistan, the population of the province of Paktika woke up this morning with new tremors, light tremors. Twice, the earth shook for a few seconds.
Slight tremors felt
The tremors, light, have nothing to do with the violence of what the population could feel two nights ago in this province. But it is in this context that live hundreds of villagers who lost their earthen houses, since they collapsed on Monday evening.
Villagers spend their night under the stars, without food, water, blankets and emergency shelter as the nights are cold and damp. Supporting and helping these disaster-stricken populations is now a matter of urgency. But delivering aid is a challenge in these steep mountains.
There, an entire village was destroyed. The people of Urgon, the district where the special envoy of RFI, Sonia Ghezali, is this moment organize themselves to deliver food by their own means to the affected populations.
” They have no shelter, they have no food »
In this same mountainous district of Urgon, the population is still in shock. If the tremors of the earthquake were violent, the damage is not more numerous than at 1:30 am from here, in the districts of Gayan and Barmal. Since this Friday morning, trucks loaded with the UN have been heading for these two districts.
Najubullah, supervisor of emergency operations, just comes back. “ The local population is in a state of depression, people are traumatized. They have no shelter, they have no food, no water, they have no blanket, the only thing they have is the clothes they are wearing. They don’t have anything else. Some made tiny shelters out of wooden sticks and pieces of plastic “, he notes.
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At the Urgon district hospital, a dozen medical specialists have just arrived as reinforcements. They are all volunteers. Mohammad Qadim comes from the neighboring province of Khost. ” 90% of injuries are fractures. That’s why we came here. We are a whole team. There are general surgeons, we have eye surgeons, and orthopedic surgeons to intervene on bone fractures. We came to help people “, he specifies.
All the injured were airlifted to provincial hospitals. The urgency now is to come to the aid of the affected populations who have returned to their villages and whose houses have collapsed.