UAE, India and UN agencies fly tonnes of relief goods to Afghanistan after deadly quake

An aftershock took more lives on Friday and threatened to pile even more misery on an area of eastern Afghanistan reeling from a powerful earthquake that state media said killed 1,150 people this week.

The UAE, India and United Nations agencies have rushed to send tonnes of relief items to Afghanistan. Aid organisations like the local Red Crescent and UN agencies like the World Food Programme have sent food, tents, sleeping mats and other essentials to families in Paktika province, the epicentre of the earthquake, and neighbouring Khost province.

The UAE on Friday dispatched a plane carrying 30 tonnes of urgent food supplies to Afghanistan to alleviate the impact of the devastating earthquake.

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The move is in implementation of the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to operate a relief air bridge for the people affected by the earthquake.

This joint relief aid enhances its relief response and meets the urgent needs for brotherly and friendly countries.

This joint relief aid among the Emirati humanitarian institutions underlined the UAE’s commitment to a humanitarian approach that enhances its relief response and meets the urgent needs for brotherly and friendly countries in need, in order to consolidate the value of the boundless giving.

Trucks loaded with relief material received from the International Organisation for Migration to be sent to the people affected by an earthquake in Gayan. AFP

The 27 tonnes of relief assistance in two flights are comprised of essential items, including family ridge tents, sleeping bags, blankets and sleeping mats, a ministry statement said on Friday. “India, a true first responder,” tweeted India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.

The relief consignment will be handed over to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Afghan Red Crescent Society in Kabul, it said. The technical team has been deployed to its embassy in the Afghan capital to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the statement said.

  Women keep their clothes to dry near the ruins of houses damaged by an earthquake in Bermal district. AFP

The embassy has been vacant since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August. Trucks of food and other necessities arrived from Pakistan, and planes full of humanitarian aid landed from Iran and Qatar.

Other countries that have offered aid were at pains to underscore that they would work only through UN agencies, not with the Taliban, which no government has officially recognised as of yet.

Authorities in Afghanistan have ended the search for survivors, a senior official said on Friday, adding that supplies of medicine and other critical aid were inadequate.

A helicopter takes off after bringing aid to an area affected by an earthquake in Gayan. Reuters

About 2,000 people were injured and 10,000 houses were partially or completely destroyed in Wednesday’s earthquake, Mohammad Nassim Haqqani, a spokesperson for the disaster ministry, said.

Aid trickled to devastated villages in remote parts of Afghanistan but thousands of people remain with little food, shelter and water three days after the country’s deadliest earthquake in decades. “The tents, food and flour we have received for a few days are not enough,” said Raqim Jan, 23, near the ruins of his home in Gayan district.

“Currently, it’s summer, it’s too hot. In two months it will be winter, and we will face severe cold. If they could repair the roofs and houses, that would be the most helpful.”

Agencies