Ittefaq: For several minutes after the earthquake struck, he could hear their screams. Then there was silence.
Mohibullah Niazi, a neighbour who helped in the rescue efforts, said Saturday that the eight people killed on the outskirts of Kabul after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck northern Afghanistan the previous night were a refugee family recently returned from neighbouring Iran.
There was only one survivor: a boy of around 3 years old, who was injured and has been hospitalised in Kabul.
Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat on Saturday increased the overall death toll from the quake to 12.
Fitrat said five homes were destroyed and another 33 significantly damaged, affecting 40 families in the provinces of Kabul, Panjshir, Logar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Nuristan.
The Afghanistan Disaster Management Authority put the overall death toll at nine. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
The family near Kabul was among the millions of Afghan refugees who have recently returned from Iran and Pakistan, after both countries launched crackdowns in 2023 on foreigners — particularly Afghans — living in their countries. They had arrived 15 days ago and were living in a tent on land next to Niazi’s
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