• At least 2,205 killed, 3,640 injured in Afghanistan quakes.
• Another 12 killed in Nangarhar and Laghman.
• “Rescue efforts still ongoing”, says deputy spokesperson.

The death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend rose sharply to more than 2,200 on Thursday, according to a new toll, making it the deadliest in decades to hit the country.

The vast majority of those killed in the magnitude-6.0 earthquake that jolted the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late on Sunday were in Kunar province, where 2,205 people died and 3,640 were injured, according to a Taliban government toll.

Another 12 people were killed and hundreds injured in the neighbouring provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman. The toll had been expected to rise as volunteers and rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble.

“Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from destroyed houses during search and rescue operations,” deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat wrote on X on Thursday, announcing the new toll, adding that “rescue efforts are still ongoing”.

Limited access to the hardest hit areas of mountainous Kunar province has delayed rescue and relief efforts, with rockfalls from repeated aftershocks obstructing already precarious roads etched onto the side of cliffs.

Various countries have flown in aid, but hundreds of villagers in the hard-hit Nurgal district were still stranded in the open air, squeezing multiple families under pieces of tarp pulled from the rubble and unsure of where they would get a morsel to eat.

A fight broke out over food when some finally reached the field in Mazar Dara where hundreds of people were camped out, little aid having reached them.

“Yesterday, some people brought some food, everyone flooded on them, people are starving, we haven´t had anything to eat for a long time,” Zahir Khan Safi, 48, told AFP.

‘Every hour counts’

Poor infrastructure in the impoverished country, still fragile from four decades of war, has also stymied the emergency response.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that local healthcare services were “under immense strain”, with shortages of trauma supplies, medicines and staff.

The agency has appealed for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services and supply distribution.

“Every hour counts,” said WHO emergency team lead in Afghanistan Jamshed Tanoli. “Hospitals are struggling, families are grieving and survivors have lost everything.”

The loss of US foreign aid to the country in January this year has exacerbated the rapid depletion of emergency stockpiles and logistical resources.

NGOs and the UN have warned that the earthquake creates a crisis within a crisis, with cash-strapped Afghanistan already contending with overlapping humanitarian disasters.

Filippo Grandi, head of the UN’s refugee agency, said the quake had “affected more than 500,000 people” in eastern Afghanistan.

The country is contending with endemic poverty, severe drought, and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover.

Even as Afghanistan reeled from its latest disaster, Pakistan began a new push to expel Afghans, with more than 6,300 people crossing the Torkham border point in quake-hit Nangarhar province on Tuesday. 

• Pakistan targets 1.3 million PoR holders for deportation crackdown.
• Thousands cross Chaman and Torkham daily, fearing arrest.
• Grandi stresses urgent aid for Afghanistan, calls donor support vital.

ISLAMABAD: The UN refugee chief has urged Pakistan to pause its mass expulsions of Afghan refugees after a devastating earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed nearly 1,500 people.

“Given the circumstances, I appeal to the Government of Pakistan to pause the implementation of the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan,” Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said on X. He warned that those being forced out are “returning to a disaster zone”.

His appeal came as rescue teams continued struggling to reach survivors after the shallow, magnitude-6.0 quake struck the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday, collapsing mud-brick homes as families slept. 

Taliban government authorities said 1,469 people were killed and more than 3,700 injured, with over 500,000 people affected — one of the country’s deadliest quakes in decades.

Pakistan has hosted Afghans fleeing violence for more than four decades, from the Soviet invasion to the 2021 Taliban takeover. Some refugees were born and raised there, while others have been awaiting relocation to third countries. Various cohorts of Afghans have found differing degrees of stability, including access to work and education.

However, Islamabad, citing a rise in militant attacks and insurgent campaigns, launched a crackdown in 2023 to evict Afghans, describing the population as “terrorists and criminals”. More than 1.2 million Afghans have since been forced to return, including over 443,000 this year alone, according to the United Nations.

The campaign has most recently targeted an estimated 1.3 million refugees holding UNHCR-issued Proof of Registration (PoR) cards, with a September 1 deadline set for them to leave or face arrest and deportation. 

UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday the agency was “preparing for significantly more returns in the coming days” due to the deadline.

Border officials report a sharp rise in crossings since the deadline expired. At the Chaman crossing, more than 4,000 people have left, according to local administrator Habib Bangulzai. In Spin Boldak on the Afghan side, migrant registration official Abdul Latif Hakimi said 250 to 300 families are returning daily since August 31.

At the Torkham crossing further north, more than 6,300 PoR holders returned on Tuesday alone, with nearly 63,000 PoR cardholders recorded entering Afghanistan since April. UNHCR data shows a surge in crossings between 24 and 30 August, with 25,490 returnees, including 13,525 PoR holders.

Analysts say the evictions are designed to pressure Afghanistan’s Taliban administration, which Pakistan accuses of sheltering militants behind a rise in border attacks. The Taliban denies the allegations.

Grandi said aid from donors, including Pakistan, remains “vital and welcome” as Afghanistan grapples with the aftermath of the quake.

After Kim Jong Un’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, North Korean staff were seen meticulously wiping down everything the leader had touched — a move analysts say is part of strict security protocols designed to thwart foreign espionage.

Even with the appearance of a budding friendship between Kim and Putin, footage showed the reclusive state’s extraordinary measures to conceal any clues about Kim’s health.

In a post on Telegram, Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev shared video of Kim’s two staff members carefully cleaning the room in the Chinese capital where Kim and Putin had met for more than two hours.

The chair’s backrest and armrests were scrubbed and a coffee table next to Kim’s chair was also cleaned. Kim’s drinking glass was also removed.

“After the negotiations were over, the staff accompanying the head of the DPRK carefully destroyed all traces of Kim’s presence,” the reporter said, referring to North Korea.

After talks in the room, Kim and Putin left for a tea meeting and bid a warm farewell to each other.

Such measures are standard protocol since the era of Kim’s predecessor, his father Kim Jong Il, said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert with the US-based Stimson Centre.

“The special toilet and the requisite garbage bags of detritus, waste and cigarette butts are so that a foreign intelligence agency, even a friendly one, does not acquire a sample and test it,” Madden said.

“It would provide insight into any medical conditions affecting Kim Jong Un. This can include hair and skin tags,” he said.

In 2019, after a Hanoi summit with US President Donald Trump, Kim’s guards were spotted blocking the floor of his hotel room to clean the room for hours, and taking out items, including a bed mattress.

Kim’s team has been spotted cleaning items before he uses them as well.

During his 2018 meeting with then South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korean security guards sprayed a chair and a desk with sanitiser and wiped them down before Kim came to sit.

Before he sat at another summit with Putin in 2023, his security team wiped his chair down with disinfectant and vigorously checked to make sure the chair was safe, with one of the guards using a metal detector to scan the seat, video footage showed.