Survivors grapple with aid cuts, Taliban a year after massive Afghan quake

People had just seconds to flee their homes when the terrifying sound of earth cracking open reverberated across western Afghanistan's Herat province.

Nobody knows for sure how many people died in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on Oct 7, 2023, or in the strong aftershocks that followed. The Taliban government estimated that at least 4,000 perished. The UN gave a far lower figure of about 1,500. Survivors stopped counting, exhausted after digging through dirt to save their loved ones or bury them.

It was the deadliest natural disaster to strike Afghanistan in recent memory.

It was also another major challenge for the Taliban since they seized power in 2021, a test of their readiness to lead a country beset by economic hardship, isolation, devastation from decades of war, and vulnerability to shocks like earthquakes and climate change.

At that time, the government really cooperated in transporting patients and the dead, said Ismatullah Rahmani, from the quake's epicenter in Zinda Jan ...