OAN Staff Abril Elfi
5:31 PM – Thursday, September 4, 2025
A 6.2-magnitude earthquake has struck Afghanistan, bringing the death toll to 2,205 and leaving at least 3,600 people injured. The latest quake follows two earlier tremors that hit the region on Sunday and Tuesday last week.
The 6.2 earthquake struck southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday, according to the German Research Centre for Geosciences, marking the third tremor in the region since Sunday.
Naqibullah Rahimi, the spokesperson for the health department in Nangarhar province, announced that the quake’s epicenter was in the remote Shiwa district, near the Pakistan border. He reported initial damage in the Barkashkot area, though assessments were still underway.
The first earthquake, a magnitude 6.0 on Sunday, devastated the provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (a little over six miles). Then, a second 5.5 tremor struck on Tuesday, which triggered landslides that cut off mountain roads and disrupted rescue efforts.
“Up to 84,000 people are directly and indirectly affected, with thousands displaced,” it added, citing initial figures.
Survivors remain without adequate shelter, while aid agencies, including the United Nations (UN), warn of dwindling resources and urgent needs for food, medical supplies, and housing.
Rescue teams have continued to pull bodies from collapsed homes on Thursday as the confirmed death toll climbed to 2,205 — with at least 3,640 others injured — the Taliban government reported.
“Everything we had has been destroyed,” said Aalem Jan, whose house in the worst-affected province of Kunar was flattened by the tremors. “The only remaining things are these clothes on our backs,” said Jan. His family sat under trees with their belongings piled next to them.
Kate Carey, the deputy head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan, noted that over 420 health facilities have closed or were suspended owing to a “massive reduction” in financing, with 80 of them in the eastern region — which was hit worst by Sunday’s earthquake.
“The consequence is that the remaining facilities are overwhelmed, have insufficient supplies and personnel, and are not as close to the affected populations as the more local facilities at a time when providing emergency trauma care is needed in the first 24 to 72 hours of the earthquake response,” said Carey.
Taliban authorities have established a camp in Kunar to coordinate supplies and humanitarian help. Two facilities organize the evacuation of injured people, the burial of the deceased, and the rescue of survivors.
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