Afghanistan earthquake kills over 1,400 and destroys villages – all we know so far
Over 1,400 people have been killed and at least 3,250 others injured after an earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan, according to the Afghan Red Crescent Society.
The quake hit the country’s rugged northeastern province of Kunar, near the Pakistan border, at roughly midnight on Sunday, destroying several villages, officials said.
Rescuers were trying to reach isolated villages in the mountainous province where the quake hit, with the provincial head of disaster management, Ehsanullah Ehsan, saying: “We cannot accurately predict how many bodies might still be trapped under the rubble. Our effort is to complete these operations as soon as possible and to begin distributing aid to the affected families.”
Here’s what we know so far.
Local residents walk by a house destroyed by the earthquake in Mazar Dara, Kunar province. Pic: AP
Number of casualties high and area difficult to access, officials say
Sharafat Zaman, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s ministry of public health, said: “Rescue operations are still underway there, and several villages have been completely destroyed.
“The figures for martyrs and injured are changing. Medical teams from Kunar, Nangarhar and the capital Kabul have arrived in the area.”
He said many areas have not been able to report casualty figures and “numbers were expected to change” as deaths and injuries are reported.
Thousands of children were at risk in the aftermath of the quake, the United Nations Children’s Fund warned on Tuesday.
UNICEF said it was sending medicines, warm clothing, tents and tarpaulins for shelter, as well as hygiene items such as soap, detergent, towels, sanitary pads and water buckets.
Taliban soldiers were also deployed to the area to provide help and security, the government said.
Rescue teams and authorities were trying to dispose of animal carcasses quickly to minimise the risk of contamination to water resources, a UN official said.
“Damaged roads, ongoing aftershocks, and remote locations of many villages severely impede the delivery of aid,” the World Health Organisation said. It added that over 12,000 people had been affected by the quake.
“The pre-earthquake fragility of the health system means local capacity is overwhelmed, creating total dependence on external actors,” it said.
The large red circle shows the earthquake near Kabul. Pic: German Research Centre for Geosciences
According to earlier reports, 30 people were killed in a single village, the health ministry said.
“The number of casualties and injuries is high, but since the area is difficult to access, our teams are still on site,” said health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman.
The Afghan Red Crescent said its officials and medical teams “rushed to the affected areas and are currently providing emergency assistance to impacted families”.
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‘Multiplicity of crises’ for Afghans
The impact of aid cuts
Afghanistan has been badly affected by Donald Trump’s decision in January to cut funding to USAID and reduce funding for other foreign aid programmes.
The UK has allocated £1m to support the UN and the International Red Cross in delivering critical healthcare and emergency supplies to affected Afghans.
China has said it is ready to provide disaster relief, while India delivered 1,000 family tents to Kabul and was moving 15 tonnes of food supplies to Kunar.
An impoverished country where quakes are always a threat
Earthquakes represent a constant danger in Afghanistan, a country that sits across three geological faultlines.
But the people of this impoverished nation are also vulnerable in a number of other ways.
Since the Taliban regained control in 2021, the international community has withdrawn much of the financial support, which formed the bulk of government spending in Afghanistan.
Even humanitarian aid, which generally bypasses government institutions, has shrunk substantially – from $3.8bn (£2.8bn) in 2022 to $767m (£566m) this year.
The US government, through its international development arm USAID, provided 45% of all assistance granted to Afghanistan last year, but those sums have been slashed by the Trump administration.
The UK, along with France, Germany, Sweden, and others, has also made deep cuts to humanitarian aid.
As a consequence, hundreds of hospitals and local health clinics in the country have been shut this year and related medical posts have been lost.
This funding crisis comes as the country tries to absorb millions of people who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban took power.
More than two million in fact, have come back this year, with Pakistan and Iran taking measures to force their return.
On arrival, they discover a country where more than half the population requires urgent humanitarian assistance, according to the UN, with millions suffering from acute food insecurity.
Large parts of northern Afghanistan are suffering a lengthy drought.
Destructive earthquakes are an unfortunate fact of life in the country.
This most recent rupture near the city of Jalalabad represents the third major quake in the past four years.
But the catastrophe is compounded in a nation that ranks as one of the poorest – and most desperate – on Earth.
What happened?
A 6.0 quake hit Kunar at around 11.47pm local time (8.17pm UK time) on Sunday.
The quake’s epicentre was near Jalalabad, Nangarhar province, at a depth of just five miles (8km). Shallower quakes such as these tend to cause more damage.
Jalalabad is situated about 74 miles (119km) from Kabul. It is considered a remote and mountainous area.
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Afghanistan particularly vulnerable to earthquakes – expert
A second earthquake struck in the same province about 20 minutes later, with a magnitude of 4.5 and a depth of 6.2 miles (10km). This was later followed by a 5.2 earthquake at the same depth.
Homes of mud and stone were levelled by the quake, with deaths and injuries reported in the districts of Nur Gul, Soki, Watpur, Manogi and Chapadare, according to the Kunar Disaster Management Authority.
Ambulances prepare to receive victims of an earthquake. Pic: Nangarhar Media Centre/AP
The first quake hit 17 miles east-northeast of the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, the US Geological Survey said. Jalalabad is a bustling trade city due to its proximity to a key border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It has a population of around 300,000 people, according to the municipality, but its metropolitan area is believed to be much larger.
Most of its buildings are low-rise constructions predominantly made from concrete and brick, though its outer areas include homes built of mud bricks and wood.
People carry an earthquake victim on a stretcher to an ambulance at an airport in Jalalabad. Pic: Reuters
Quake measures slightly lower than the country’s deadliest disaster
Afghanistan is prone to earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
The country is also one of the world’s poorest, having suffered decades of conflict, with poor infrastructure leaving it particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.
A magnitude 6.3 earthquake and strong aftershocks struck Afghanistan on 7 October 2023.
Afghans donate blood for quake victims. Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health/AP
The country’s Taliban government said at least 4,000 people had been killed, but the United Nations said the number of people killed was around 1,500.
The 2023 earthquake is considered the deadliest natural disaster to hit Afghanistan in recent memory.
A series of other earthquakes in the country’s west killed more than 1,000 people last year.
Humanitarian officials and locals said many villages are still recovering and living in temporary structures after the previous disasters.
Aid distribution. Pic: Bakhtar News Agency
Disaster adds to ‘perfect storm of problems’ for Afghanistan
The earthquake is a “perfect storm” in a country that is already suffering a “multiplicity of crises,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has told Sky News.
Filippo Grandi said the situation in the country was “very tragic” and added: “We have very little information as of yet, but already, reports of hundreds of people killed and many more made homeless.”
Afghanistan already has finite resources, as it is one of the world’s poorest countries and is also war-torn, having been taken over by the Taliban in 2021 when foreign forces withdrew after years of fighting.
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The withdrawal triggered a cut to the international funding that formed the bulk of government finances in Afghanistan.
Humanitarian aid, aimed at bypassing political institutions to serve urgent needs, has shrunk to $767m (£567m) this year, down from $3.8bn (£2.08bn) in 2022, according to Reuters, yet the United Nations estimates more than half the population is in urgent need of aid.
Mr Grandi said Afghanistan is also suffering from a “big drought”, while Iran has “sent back almost 2 million people” and Pakistan “threatens to do the same”.
“It’s extremely difficult to mobilise resources because of the Taliban. So it’s a perfect storm,” he added. “And this earthquake, likely to have been quite devastating, is going to just add to the misery.”
He appealed to “all those who can help to please do that”.
Emergency relief hampered by lack of women’s rights, charity warns
Diplomats and aid officials say crises elsewhere in the world, along with donor frustration over the Taliban’s policies towards women, have spurred the cuts in funding.
Oxfam’s chief executive Halima Begum told Sky News: “Emergency relief in Afghanistan, either over the long term or even during this emergency, is a really difficult process because women’s rights are not upheld very well in this country.”
She said providing aid “presents a very difficult and complex challenge for us” and the charity had to pull out of the country “for reasons to do with operational difficulty”.
Oxfam is working through partner agencies such as the British Red Cross, “trying to figure out how best we can get support to what you can see are very difficult, mountainous regions”, she said.
She added: “All of the NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and charities will be getting together, figuring out who is present there.
“And of course, there’s an ongoing conversation and monitoring with the Disasters Emergency Committee to just see where the death toll goes and what that response level should be.”
“So far, no foreign governments have reached out to provide support for rescue or relief work,” a spokesperson of Afghanistan’s foreign office said.
A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said the country was ready to provide disaster relief assistance “according to Afghanistan’s needs and within its capacity”.
In a post on X, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said its mission in Afghanistan was preparing to help those in areas devastated by the quake.
The UK has stopped sharing some intelligence with the US on suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean following concerns over America’s strikes against the vessels.
The US has reported carrying out 14 strikes since September on boats near the Venezuelan coast.
The death toll from the US attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea has risen to more than 70, as the US escalates a military build-up in the Caribbean Sea.
Downing Street did not deny reporting by CNN that the UK is withholding intelligence from the US to avoid being complicit in US military strikes it believes may breach international law.
Britain, which controls several territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, has long assisted the US in identifying vessels suspected of smuggling narcotics based on intelligence gathered in its overseas territories in the region.
The USS Gravely destroyer arrives to dock for military exercises in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 26 October (AP Photo/Robert Taylor)
That information helped the US Coast Guard locate the ships, seize the drugs and detain their crews, CNN cited sources as saying.
But since the Trump administration started carrying out strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in early September, UK officials have become concerned their intelligence may be used to acquire targets for the attacks they believe may be illegal.
The intelligence-sharing pause began more than a month ago, CNN reported, quoting sources as saying Britain shares UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk’s assessment that the strikes amount to extrajudicial killing.
The reports could provide an awkward backdrop for a meeting between Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and her US counterpart Marco Rubio, expected on Wednesday at the G7 foreign ministerial summit in Canada.
A Number 10 spokesman did not deny the move when asked about the pause in intelligence sharing.
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“We don’t comment on security or intelligence matters,” the official said in response to repeated questions.
“The US is our closest partner on defence, security and intelligence, but in line with a long-standing principle, I’m just not going to comment on intelligence matters.”
He added that “decisions on this are a matter for the US” and that “issues around whether or not anything is against international law is a matter for a competent international court, not for governments to determine”.
A Pentagon official told CNN the department “doesn’t talk about intelligence matters”.
On Monday, US secretary of war Pete Hegseth said on X that the previous day, “two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”.
He said: “These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific.
“Both strikes were conducted in international waters and 3 male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All 6 were killed. No U.S. forces were harmed.”
The United Nations human rights chief has described the US strikes on alleged drug dealers off the coast of South America as “unacceptable” and a violation of international human rights law.
Venezuela says they are illegal, amount to murder and are aggression against the sovereign South American nation.
World
Hundreds of Russian troops roll into key frontline Ukrainian city ‘Mad Max-style’, video appears to show
Hundreds of Russian troops have pushed deeper into eastern Ukrainian cities ‘Mad Max-style’, video released by the Russians appears to show.
The troops were seen rolling through the fog on motorbikes, with some on the roofs of battered cars and vans, apparently into the city of Pokrovsk, as Russia said its forces had also pressed further into Kupiansk on Tuesday.
Ukraine has acknowledged the presence of the troops on its territory, although Reuters news agency says that when the video was shot is yet to be verified.
The fight to gain hold of Pokrovsk, a strategic point on a large road and rail artery in the Donetsk region, has been raging for well over a year, in Vladimir Putin’s push to gain control of the whole of Ukraine’s industrial east.
Situation on the battlefield
The Donbas region comprises the neighbouring regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukraine’s military said around 300 Russian soldiers were now inside Pokrovsk and that Moscow had intensified efforts to get more troops in over the past few days – using dense fog for cover from drones.
It said Ukrainian forces were fighting Russian groups in the city.
Russian soldiers enter Pokrovsk in this screen grab obtained from a social media video released on 10 November, 2025. Pic: Reuters
Moscow says taking Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, would give it a platform to push north towards the two largest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Posting on X on Tuesday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “The front: our main focus right now is on the Pokrovsk direction and the Zaporizhzhia region, where the Russians are increasing the number and scale of assaults.
“The situation there remains difficult, in part because of weather conditions that favor the attacks. But we continue to destroy the occupier, and I thank every one of our units, every warrior involved in defending Ukraine’s positions.”
Destruction in Pokrovsk on 1 November. Pic: AP
Moscow and Kyiv have given different accounts of the battle for Pokrovsk. Moscow has for days said the city is surrounded, while Kyiv has denied Moscow controls the city and said on Monday that it was still able to supply neighbouring Myrnohrad.
Moscow has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year, attempting to surround it and threaten supply lines, rather than use the deadly frontal assaults it used to take the city of Bakhmut in 2023.
Russian war bloggers published a video on Tuesday showing what they said were Russian forces entering Pokrovsk along a road enveloped in fog, in what some Telegram users said looked like scenes from the Mad Max action film series, many of which are set in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
The date of the footage has not been independently verified.
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Satellite image shows armoured vehicles in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, on 3 November, 2025. Pic: Reuters
Russia said it had taken 256 buildings and that Moscow’s forces were actively advancing to the northwest and east of Pokrovsk as well as around the railway station.
Russia has executed a pincer movement around the city and was close to closing it, open-source battlefield maps from both sides show, though Kyiv has counter-attacked around the town of Dobropillia.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in an interview with the New York Post that Russia was concentrating some 150,000 troops in a push to capture Pokrovsk, with mechanised groups and marine brigades forming part of this drive.
Russia said its forces had taken full control of the eastern part of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. A Russian commander, who gave his call sign as Hunter, said his troops had taken control of an oil depot on the eastern edge of Kupiansk.
In a video statement issued by Russia’s defence ministry, he said his forces had also taken control of a series of train stops along the railway to Kupiansk Vuzlovyi, a settlement around 6km (4 miles) south of the centre of Kupiansk itself.
Russia also said its troops had taken control of the settlement of Novouspenivske in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine withdrew from some villages, including Novouspenivske, due to intense attacks involving more than 400 artillery strikes per day, RBC-Ukraine news agency cited a military spokesperson as saying.
Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19% of Ukraine, or some 116,000 square km (44,800 square miles), up from 18% nearly three years ago, according to Ukrainian maps tracking frontline changes.
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