Aftershock in Afghanistan as Quake Toll Rises to 1,150 Dead

Two days after a quake struck the region, razing hundreds of mud-brick homes and killing 1,150 people, official media said that an aftershock shook a hard-hit part of eastern Afghanistan.

The state-run Bakhtar News Agency said that a 4.2 magnitude earthquake in southeast Afghanistan claimed five more lives and injured 11 people. Pakistan's Meteorological Department confirmed this information.

The 38 million-strong nation was already experiencing a terrible economic crisis that had driven millions of people into abject poverty and put more than a million children at serious risk of starvation.

The magnitude 6 earthquake that occurred on Wednesday while people were asleep left thousands without shelter and threw the country's growing needs into sharp relief. Aid organisations regret having to pay local employees with bags of cash delivered by hand since countries won't do business with the Taliban directly. Afghanistan is still blocked off from the global financial system.

The World Food Program and local Red Crescent have intervened to provide food and other emergency necessities like tents and sleeping mats to the most vulnerable households in Paktika province, the epicentre of the earthquake, and nearby Khost province.

However, despite the efforts of their new Taliban-led administration and the international humanitarian community to provide assistance, locals looked to be mostly left on their own to deal with the aftermath. Damage and rain made the poor mountain routes going to the impacted communities even worse. Villagers have started burying their dead and manually searching through the debris for survivors.