U N I T E D  N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network
Afghanistan: Relief work stepped up for Friday quake victims
15 April 2002


ISLAMABAD, 15 April (IRIN) - Aid agencies on Monday stepped up emergency
relief work for the latest victims of an earthquake in northern
Afghanistan, which killed at least 50 people and injured another 150 on
Friday.

Rebecca Richards, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul,
that most of those killed were children. The quake, measuring 5.8 on the
Richter scale, hit several villages in Nahrin district of the northern
Baghlan Province. Its epicentre was just 35 km from the surface.

"Dawabi and Khojakheder villages have completely flattened out," Richards
explained. The two villages were previously damaged by the 25 March quake,
which measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, killing about 1,000 people and
making thousands more homeless.

According to OCHA, the most seriously affected locations were Dawabi and
Khojakheder, where several hundred families had been provided with aid.
Other areas affected by the quake included Borkeh, Jelgah valley,
Shinderak, Koedhai, and Koh-I-Zolaaw - all in Nahrin district.

Cyril Dupre, an official of the French aid agency ACTED, told IRIN from
Kabul that a total of 1,500 families needed help in the quake-hit areas.

"For the moment, urgent assistance has been completed for most of the
affected people," Dupre said, including food, tents and blankets.
"However, in the long run, we need to build shelters for the people, and
ACTED plans to build between 5,000 to 10,000 such shelters in the future,"
he added.

Aid workers said massive relief work was undertaken from Saturday using
helicopters, horseback and vehicles, and that while the area was rainy it
was not particularly cold.

Friday's quake was felt in Kabul, as well as in the Tajik capital,
Dushanbe, and the western Pakistani border city of Peshawar. No casualties
or destruction were reported in those cities.

Malik Salahuddin, a seismological official in Peshawar, capital of North
West Frontier Province, told IRIN that aftershocks were still being
recorded, suggesting the activity - unusual because of its shallowness -
had not died out in the area, about 150 km north of Kabul.

"Usually the epicentre in that area is quite deep - more than 200 km deep
- but this is shallow, just 35 km deep, and that is the reason for such
massive localised destruction," Salahuddin explained.

He said 44 aftershocks were recorded by their office, the closest to
Afghanistan, on Saturday alone. "Most of the aftershocks are about 4.3 on
the Richter scale, but cannot be felt other than in the immediate area of
the epicentre," he added.

Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reported on Monday that at least two more
people had died on Sunday when another tremor jolted Nahrin District. Yet
another tremor in the early hours of Monday morning shook wide areas of
the country, but there were no immediate reports of deaths, the news
agency added.

Friday's quake was the third to strike northern Afghanistan since last
month. An earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale in the same area
of the Hindu Kush mountains killed more than 100 people on 3 March. It was
the strongest to hit the region since 1983.


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