PUBLISHED
September 06, 2025
KARACHI:
“I woke up to some muffled, disorienting sounds,” recalls Shafiullah, 38, from Mamagal village in Kunar’s Nurgal district, who was trapped under the debris with multiple wounds. “In a muffled silence, broken only by the brittle cracking of plaster shifting above, I could hear my own ragged breath loud in the dust-thick dark, catching in my throat. I managed to scramble out of the fallen wooden beams and a mountain of pebbles, dust and plaster, stood up trembling and in pain. I wanted to find my family but my cousin appeared to hold my arm. With his other arm, he held my son. Seven family members died right there when the room collapsed in the earthquake.”
While narrating his ordeal, he told The Express Tribune that he, his wife, daughters, and sons, were asleep in the same room when the earthquake jolted the entire area: “I have lost everything and have nothing left to restart life again here. We are living under the open sky, fearing rains that could multiply our miseries. We urgently need shelter.”
Shafiullah added that his son, daughter, and sister were injured while other family members lost their lives; “The strong earthquake and multiple aftershocks have destroyed my house. All items of daily use, including home appliances, beds, blankets, and other belongings got buried under the mud and stones and cannot be retrieved.”
Around midnight on August 31, 6.0-magnitude earthquake jolted buildings from Kabul to Islamabad, collapsing homes on families asleep in their homes in several remote mountainous villages of Kunar province, with Nurgal district being the worst affected.
According to Taliban’s government deputy spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat, 2,205 people have died and 3,640 injured in Kunar’s Nurgal, Chawkay (Sokai) District and Mangoai districts of the province, where search and rescue operations are still underway.
The Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority has confirmed that about 5,412 houses were destroyed in the recent deadly earthquake.
Taliban officials said 12 people were killed and 255 injured in Nangarhar province, while 58 were injured in Laghman province.
Another resident of Wadir village of Kunar’s Nurgal district, Sahib Haji, said his entire house collapsed in the earthquake, adding five members of his uncle’s family had died and several of his nephews and nieces were injured that night when the earth jolted.
“We are receiving food items, and the injured are being treated on time,” says Haji. “However, we currently have no shelters, which are urgently needed by the affected families, as more than 300 houses in the village have been destroyed and people are spending their days and nights under the open sky.”
Malik Naqeeb Ullah from Nurgal district is also among those who lost family members in the devastating earthquake.
“Around 11:50 pm, the earthquake struck and my brother’s house collapsed,” says Naqeeb Ullah. “In the incident, his five daughters, two sons, and his uncle’s wife who was staying with them died in that house, while two other nephews lost their lives in another house.”
He added that the weather is turning cold and, in case of rain, their problems would worsen, urging the authorities to provide tents to them without delay.
Hayat Ullah Momand, a member of a local youth organisation in Kunar, along with other volunteers, visits high-altitude villages daily to provide food and other assistance to affected families.
“Unpaved roads and paths leading to the villages are blocked by stones and mud which prevented rescuers from reaching quickly,” shares Momand. “Because of the blocked roads, the Taliban government used helicopters for rescue operations in far flung villages in mountains. Local rescuers have to travel on foot for three to five hours to reach remote villages in the hills and help the affected families. Assistance operations in those areas may take another three to four weeks because of the difficulties in accessibility.”
Momand revealed that like other natural disasters, the recent earthquake has had an added impact on women and children, as many of them are suffering from, shock, trauma and fear of more jolts, as they experienced several aftershocks.
Health facilities that were present in certain affected areas were destroyed in the earthquake, and as a result, the injured and those suffering from trauma had to be rushed to the main hospital in Kunar city. “The temporary medical camps established by the government and humanitarian organisations are also far away from the affected villages which is another major challenge for the community,” adds Momand.
Dr Sultan Muhammad Azeemi, a local elder of Kunar’s Dewgal valley told The Express Tribune that Shomash, Wadir, Ghazi Abad, and other villages of Nurgal district, as well as villages in Chawkay (Sokai) district near the epicentre were almost completely destroyed by the jolts, making life there impossible.
“Drinking water resources have dried up, agricultural land and irrigation channels have been destroyed, and a strange substance has emerged from the earth, causing fear among local people,” shares Dr Azeemi. “In a small village adjacent to Dewgal Valley, 118 people have died and 200 are critically injured out of a population of 500, which shows the scale of the devastation.
He said that four years ago this area was hit by a tremor with no major devastation, but the recent earthquake has taken away all the community’s means of survival. In the affected areas, most people earned their livelihood from farming and livestock, both of which have been destroyed. Most of the houses have collapsed, and even those partially damaged cannot be approached by their owners due to fear. About 80 percent of the community’s livestock has perished and the remaining animals are so frightened that they cannot be managed.”
Responding to a query on why Afghanistan is prone to earthquakes, assistant professor Dr Mushtaq Ahmad Jan, Centre for Disaster Preparedness and Management at the University of Peshawar said that Afghanistan is located in a highly active seismic zone where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates are colliding and produce tremors.
“The Herat fault line passes directly through the city of Herat,” he explains. “Besides this, Kunar and Panjshir provinces, Kabul’s Surobi district, Speen Ghar, and Pakistan’s Chaman fault line lie along the boundary between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.”
He said that since the earthquake originated at a shallow depth, it has caused huge financial and human losses in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province.
Dr Mushtaq Ahmad Jan recommends that “The new buildings and infrastructure that will now be constructed should be earthquake-resilient,” advises Dr Jan. “If people cannot afford modern techniques, they should adopt the indigenous designs developed by their elders in mountainous areas.”
According to the UN, two years ago three deadly earthquakes measuring 6.3 magnitude shook Herat province in the western Afghanistan on 7, 11, and 15 October 2023. The tremors created widespread destruction, killing 1480 people and injuring 1950 others across 382 villages of the province.
The earthquake that struck Kunar was not just a geological event but a human catastrophe, stripping thousands of families of shelter, safety, and livelihood. Amid the grief of mass burials and the fear of aftershocks, survivors like Shafiullah and his neighbours now endure the uncertainty of life under the open sky. As aid trickles into the region’s inaccessible valleys, the devastation is a reminder of Afghanistan’s fragility against natural disasters — and of the urgent need to rebuild not only homes but resilience, before the ground shakes again.
Abdur Razzaq is a Peshawar-based multimedia journalist. He tweets @TheAbdurRazzaq
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer
