LEILA FADEL, HOST:
And I'm Leila Fadel. Good morning. More than a day after an earthquake devastated parts of Afghanistan, rescuers are still trying to reach victims.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A spokesman for the Taliban government says more than 1,400 people are known dead so far.
FADEL: On the line with us is NPR's Diaa Hadid. She covers Afghanistan from her base in Mumbai. Hi, Diaa.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Hi, Leila.
FADEL: So what is happening with the rescue effort?
HADID: Well, aid workers and residents are telling us they're still trying to reach impacted areas, particularly a remote mountainous district called Kunar. You can get a sense of what it looks like from drone footage shared by the disaster management authority. There's collapsed mudbrick homes, and they're perched on steep hills that overlook narrow river valleys. One aid worker told me some places were only accessible by goat trail before the quake. That includes one village called Dyugal (ph), and it appears to have been wiped out. This is Ibrahim Ahmed from the Islamic Relief aid group.
IBRAHIM AHMED: We are taking those injured people, walking for three hours till we arrive to the first point, close to Dyugal, where Islamic Relief was one of the first responders.
FADEL: Wow - walking for three hours with wounded people. What's happening in other areas?
HADID: Authorities are trying to rescue people in other places by helicopter. And they're trying to reach places by car, but these are long, difficult journeys over dirt roads. Two residents told us locals are just trying to dig out people by hand. But, Leila, the remoteness isn't the only thing that's making this crisis potentially worse than it should be.
FADEL: What else might be making it worse?
HADID: There's the heavy rains that came days before. And it potentially loosened the ground and may have made these mountain villages more vulnerable to collapse. And this earthquake comes as aid groups are already stretched thin. That's after President Trump suspended most aid early this year amid claims that the Taliban was siphoning off some of it. But America was the largest aid donor to Afghanistan, and these cuts have had a calamitous impact. Hungry people are going without. Hundreds of medical centers have shut down in recent months. Midwives were telling us as early as March that they were seeing more babies die because birthing women couldn't get to health centers on time.
FADEL: Wow.
HADID: Now the U.N. says they're trying to raise money for an emergency appeal.
FADEL: Do we have any sense of whether the international community will step up?
HADID: Countries may donate to the U.N., but the spokesman of the Taliban's disaster management authority told NPR they're also contacting national and international aid groups. But donors are unlikely to hand over money directly to the Taliban, considering those allegations of siphoning off aid, and, frankly, because of the Taliban's restrictions on women, which have made it difficult for even female aid workers to help female victims.
FADEL: What do you know about the victims so far?
HADID: Well, what we know is from what one of our producers heard from a man who was trying to rescue people out of their homes, and he said he heard women and children crying out for help. That's to be expected because the quake occurred while people were sleeping in their homes. But a senior aid worker for World Vision also told us that the victims likely include some of the more than 2 million Afghans who were deported from Iran and Pakistan this year. She says many of those families were encouraged to settle in areas that were impacted by this quake.
FADEL: NPR's Diaa Hadid, thank you for your reporting.
HADID: You're welcome, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
