TRANSCRIPT
Afghanistan's national disaster authority says two powerful magnitude-6.3 earthquakes followed by strong aftershocks killed more than 2,400 people in the country's west on Saturday.
They were among the world's deadliest quakes this year after tremors in Turkey and Syria together killed an estimated 50,000 in February.
The Taliban government says six villages have been completely destroyed with hundreds of victims still under the rubble.
This unnamed local man says more than a dozen of his relatives have been killed.
"Thirteen members of my family are injured, and they need urgent support, you can see the situation here, many people have been martyred, and in some places the entire family is dead. We are so worried and we need help."
Aid organisation Save the Children says that children are especially vulnerable and need immediate shelter, food and other supplies. Arshad Malik is the country director for Save The Children in Afghanistan.
“The children are definitely vulnerable. As I said, more than nine thousand families have their houses destroyed and children are part of these, like, we believe thousands of children are vulnerable and they have been forced out of their homes and they need immediate shelter, food and other support. We are also concerned whether there will be access to water, access to food, access to health services and access to education in the near future because most of the infrastructure most likely is destroyed.”
Mr Malik says the affected areas were already facing food insecurity before the quakes struck.
“The area we are talking about - Herat and the surrounding provinces - are all fall into phased classification of food insecurity. They are all falling into IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) Phase 3, which is 'food insecure area' already because of economic situation and the drought. So, this is a crisis on top of another crisis which they were facing already, and the families need urgent support for now.”
The U-S Geological Survey ((USGS)) says the Saturday quakes in the west of the country hit 35 km northwest of the city of Herat, with one of 6.3 magnitude, .
Daniel Timm, is the Chief of communications for UNICEF in the Afghan capital, Kabul. He tells the ABC that the way homes are built in Afghanistan make them more susceptible to collapse.
"So we are receiving the first preliminary reports from our colleagues who are on the ground there. It's very important to assess the situation to design a proper response but of course, search and rescue operations are going on. You might have seen some pictures of this area. It's a very remote area. It's almost desert like area and people have a very special way of constructing their houses because there are termites. So they try to avoid wooden beams, and it's built out of brick mud and these are collapsing really quickly."
And there are other problems.
"People are not very resilient because the economic situation of Afghanistan has been spiralling down. So people have very little to get back on onto their feet and also in this particular region, we have many displaced people who have been displaced over the many years that the country has been in trouble. So this particular part of the population is even more vulnerable. And now the needs are high. Apart from the search and rescue we are already sending first supplies here our trucks on the way. W e are distributing winter jackets blank. It's because it's getting cold. People need a roof over their head so we are distributing towels and sheets."
Mr Timm is calling for international aid.
"Obviously it's a very difficult situation for a country that is in this kind of economic situation. But it's even more important so that the international community continues to support organisations like UNICEF, who are trying to deliver relief to the children in terms of water sanitation, in terms of health interventions in terms of warm winter clothes. We are trying to help people who have survived and traumatised to give them social and psychological support. All this is very important."
