Afghanistan airdrops commandos to rescue quake survivors

• Toll stands at 1,457 deaths, 3,394 injuries.
• WFP warns food aid will run out in four weeks.
• Entire households wiped out.
  

Afghanistan airdropped commandos on Wednesday to pull survivors from the rubble in areas ravaged by earthquakes that have killed more than 1,400 this week, as a UN agency warned that food aid for victims would run out soon without urgent funding.

Dozens of commando forces were being airdropped at sites where helicopters cannot land, to help carry the injured to safer ground, in what aid groups said was a race against time to rescue those still stuck under rubble.

Time was also running out for those who survived the two devastating quakes in the remote eastern region of the impoverished country, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Wednesday.

John Aylieff, the head of WFP in Afghanistan, told Reuters that the agency only has enough funding and stocks for the next four weeks.

"Four weeks is just not enough even to meet the basic, essential needs of the population struck by the earthquake, let alone put the victims on a path back to rebuilding their lives," Aylieff said.

WFP funding for Afghanistan this year is just under $300 million, according to UN financial data, down from $1.7 billion in 2022, the first full year the country was ruled by the Taliban.

Resources for rescue and relief work are tight in the nation of 42 million people hit by war, poverty and shrinking aid. It has received limited global help after the disaster.

The first earthquake of magnitude-6, one of Afghanistan's deadliest in recent years, unleashed widespread damage and destruction when it struck the provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar around midnight on Sunday at a shallow depth of 10km.

A second quake of magnitude-5.5 on Tuesday evening caused panic and interrupted rescue efforts as it sent rocks sliding down mountains and cut off roads to villages in remote areas.

The toll stands at 1,457 deaths, 3,394 injuries and more than 6,700 destroyed homes, the Taliban administration said. The UN has said the toll could rise, with people still trapped under rubble.

Authorities have set up a camp to coordinate supplies and emergency aid, while two centres were overseeing transfer of the injured, burial of the dead and the rescue of survivors, Ehsanullah Ehsan, the head of disaster management in Kunar, said in a text message.

"What we really need is air support, helicopters. Tragically WFP had a helicopter ... until a few months ago when funding cuts put an end to that," Aylieff said.

Afghanistan has been badly hit by US President Donald Trump's funding cuts to foreign aid, while donor frustration over the Taliban's restrictive policies towards women and curbs on aid workers have worsened its isolation.

Entire households wiped out

In some villages in Kunar province, entire households were wiped out. Survivors sifted through rubble looking for families, carried bodies on woven stretchers and dug graves with pickaxes.

In Lulam village, one of the hardest-hit, Darbar, a 63-year-old woman who goes by one name, said she and her family had been waiting for aid for three days since the earthquake destroyed their house.

"No one even hears our voices," she said, perched on a traditional wood-and-rope bed, adding that she had been injured on the chest. "Now we are just sitting with hope in God. We have no house, nothing to eat."

On the nearby mountain road, trucks carrying sacks of flour or men with shovels could be seen on their way to villages even worse hit.

Ruhila Mateen from Aseel, a humanitarian tech platform that has teams on the ground, said conditions were worsening by the hour for survivors, with women and children especially vulnerable.

Flimsy or poorly-built homes made of dry masonry, stone and timber gave little protection from the quakes, in ground left unstable by days of heavy rain, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The agency, which is pulling together the global disaster effort, called for emergency shelter, food assistance and sanitation facilities, along with drinking water, critical medical supplies and other items.

An official of international group Doctors without Borders (MSF), which distributed trauma kits at two hospitals in the affected areas, also called for more humanitarian assistance.

Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.