Aid includes food, medicines, tents, blankets and bubble mats to support earthquake victims
STAFF REPORT
PESHAWAR: Pakistan on Wednesday dispatched 105 tonnes of humanitarian relief to Afghanistan following a telephone call between Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. The consignment includes food, medicines, tents, blankets and bubble mats to support victims of the recent earthquakes, according to the government. “We extend our deepest condolences and prayers for the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Dar said in a statement, adding that “Pakistan stands in solidarity with the brotherly people of Afghanistan in this difficult time.” A magnitude-6.0 earthquake hit the Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving residents huddled in the open air for fear of powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to pull people from under flattened buildings. The earthquake killed more than 1,400 people and injured over 3,300, Taliban authorities said, making it one of the deadliest in decades to hit the impoverished country. The vast majority of the casualties were in Kunar province, with a dozen dead and hundreds hurt in nearby Nangarhar and Laghman provinces. In Kunar’s Nurgal district, victims remained trapped under the rubble and were difficult to rescue, local official Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad told AFP on Wednesday. “There are some villages which have still not received aid,” he said. Landslides caused by the earthquake stymied access to already isolated villages. The non-governmental group Save the Children said one of their aid teams “had to walk for 20 kilometres (12 miles) to reach villages cut off by rock falls, carrying medical equipment on their backs with the help of community members”. The World Health Organization warned the number of casualties from the earthquake was expected to rise, “as many remain trapped in destroyed buildings”. In two days, the Taliban government’s defence ministry said it organised 155 helicopter flights to evacuate some 2,000 injured and their relatives to regional hospitals. In the Mazar Dara village of Kunar, a small mobile clinic was deployed to provide emergency care to the injured, but no tents were set up to shelter survivors, an AFP correspondent said. On Tuesday, a defence ministry commission said it had instructed “the relevant institutions to take measures in all areas to normalise the lives of the earthquake victims”, without providing further details on the plans to do so.
