Two more earthquakes hit western Afghanistan

Two more powerful earthquakes rocked western Afghanistan Sunday, killing four and injuring more than 150. Another 6.3 and a 5.4 earthquake, as measured on the Richter Scale, struck just after 8 a.m. local time, and was centered about 20 miles northwest of Herat City. Four people have died and more than 150 were injured. Doctors Without Borders Afghanistan Program head Yahya Kalilah told the AFP news agency that casualties would likely be low because people were already sleeping outside in tents.

The quake series began on Oct. 7 with a 6.3 tremor and eight powerful aftershocks, which devastated rural villages northwest of Herat City. There have been a total of four earthquakes measuring 6.3 in the last eight days.

The initial quake killed at least 2,400 people and flattened entire villages made of mud-brick homes. Schools, health clinics and other village facilities also collapsed, leaving little besides piles of broken bricks and broken bodies. In many places, there are more volunteers to search for the dead and to dig mass graves than there are living residents, reports The Associated Press.

Nothing left

Fifty-six-year-old Zaher lost 13 members of his family during the Oct. 7 quake, including daughters, sons and multiple grandchildren, reports CNN. While being rescued from the rubble, 35-year-old Fatima discovered that all seven of her children, ages 4 months to 14 years, had been killed when their home collapsed.

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The 6.3 quake that hit on Wednesday flattened all 700 homes in the village of Chahak, which had been spared in previous tremors. Now, there are mounds of soil where homes used to be, reports the AP. There were no reported casualties of Chahak villagers, as residents had already moved out of their homes and into tents.

Those killed in the original quake, which hit around 11 a.m. local time, were mostly women and children who were at home, United Nations officials reported on Thursday. UNICEF is asking for $20 million to respond to the earthquakes.

“The situation is very critical,” MSF’s Yahya Kalilah told AFP. “In terms of psychology, people are panicked and traumatized.”

“People are not feeling safe. I will assure you 100%, no one will sleep in their house.”

Still searching

A week after the first devastating quake, Noor Ahmad is still searching for his 5-year-old son, Sardar. New York Times bureau chief for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Christina Goldbaum, shares Ahmad’s poignant and devastating search for Sardar.

Ahmad found his wife, his mother and his five daughters in the morgue, but could not find his son. He dug under the rubble of their home, he combed through trauma rooms and he searched every body bag in the morgue. Twice.

Now, lying by a tent outside his former home, he is torn “between the incomprehensible pain of losing his family and the tiny spark of hope that somewhere, somehow, his son might still be alive.”

“I am just begging with God,” he said.

“It’s worse for those people than if they knew their relatives are dead,” said Freshta Yaqoobi, managing director of the Organization for Sustainable Aid in Afghanistan, an aid group helping families affected by the quakes. “If you don’t know the fate of your loved ones it feels like you’re dying every second; you have a wound that can’t heal.”

“Afghanistan is home to one of the world’s worst humanitarian and child rights crises. This is by far the worst earthquake it has endured in many years,” Siddig Ibrahim, UNICEF Afghanistan’s chief of field office, told CNN in an interview on Friday.

“Things happening (elsewhere) in the world are not going to stop,” Ibrahim added. “The children of Afghanistan deserve equally as all children in the world.”

Holly Richardson is the editor of Utah Policy.