Rescuers are using helicopters to search for survivors in the ruins of remote villages in eastern Afghanistan after a powerful earthquake killed 800 people and injured 1,800 others.
Many are feared trapped under the rubble of their homes after the magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck on Sunday near the country’s border with Pakistan.
Authorities searched by air for the second day on Tuesday as roads blocked with debris and the mountainous terrain in the affected areas made land travel difficult.
The Taliban government has appealed for international help. The United Nations has released emergency funds, while the UK has pledged £1m ($1.3m) in aid.
Sunday’s earthquake was one of the strongest to hit Afghanistan in recent years. The country is very prone to earthquakes because it is located on top of a number of fault lines where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
There were 90 helicopter flights on Monday to airlift survivors out of remote villages in Kunar province.
The terrain was so rough in one part of the Mazar valley that one helicopter failed to land after three attempts, one Taliban source said.
Survivors have been brought to a hospital in Jalalabad, which was being overwhelmed with hundreds of patients a day even before the disaster.
Mir Zaman told the BBC that he pulled his dead children out of the rubble by himself.
Credit: bbc.com
