ISLAMABAD (AP) – More than 90 per cent of the people killed by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in western Afghanistan last weekend were women and children, United Nations (UN) officials reported.
Taleban officials said last Saturday’s earthquake killed more than 2,000 people of all ages and genders across Herat province. The epicentre was in Zenda Jan district, where 1,294 people died, 1,688 were injured and every home was destroyed, according to UN figures.
Women and children were more likely to have been at home when the quake struck in the morning, said the chief of the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund field office in Herat Siddig Ibrahim. “When the first earthquake hit, people thought it was an explosion, and they ran into their homes,” he said.
Hundreds of people, mostly women, remain missing in Zenda Jan.
The Afghanistan representative for the United Nations Population Fund, Jaime Nadal, said there would have been no “gender dimension” to the death toll if the quake had happened at night.
“At that time of the day, men were out in the field,” Nadal told The Associated Press. “Many men migrate to Iran for work. The women were at home doing the chores and looking after the children. They found themselves trapped under the rubble. There was clearly a gender dimension.”
The initial quake, numerous aftershocks and a second 6.3-magnitude quake on Wednesday flattened entire villages, destroying hundreds of mud-brick homes that could not withstand such force. Schools, health clinics and other village facilities also collapsed.
