Nūrgal (Afghanistan) (AFP) - Survivors of an earthquake that flattened villages in eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 800 people, spent the night in the open as rescuers worked Tuesday to pull victims from the rubble.

The 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck just before midnight Sunday, with the worst of the destruction in Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

Rescuers searched into the night to pull to safety those trapped under the debris of simple mud and stone homes built into steep valleys.

The dead, some of them children, were wrapped in white shrouds by villagers who prayed over their bodies before burying them, while helicopters ferried the wounded to hospitals.

“The rooms and walls collapsed… killing some children and injuring others,” said 22-year-old Zafar Khan Gojar, who was evacuated from Nurgal to Jalalabad along with his brother, whose leg was broken.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, facing a protracted humanitarian crisis and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbours Pakistan and Iran in recent years.

The earthquake epicentre was about 27 kilometres (17 miles) from Jalalabad, according to the USGS, which said it struck a shallow eight kilometres below the Earth’s surface.

Around 800 people were killed and 2,500 injured in Kunar alone, near the epicentre, Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

“Many people are stuck under the rubble of their roofs,” the disaster management head in eastern Kunar province, Ehsanullah Ehsan, told AFP on Monday afternoon, warning the death toll could rise.

Another 12 people were killed and 255 injured in neighbouring Nangarhar province, while 58 people were injured in Laghman province.

Some of the most severely impacted villages in Kunar remain inaccessible due to road blockages, the UN migration agency told AFP.

The United Nations was working with authorities to “swiftly assess needs, provide emergency assistance and stand ready to mobilise additional support,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement Monday.

An initial $5 million had been released from the UN’s global emergency response fund, he said.

The disaster is unfolding against a grim funding outlook for humanitarian assistance. The United States was the largest aid donor to Afghanistan until early 2025, when all but a sliver of funds were cancelled after President Donald Trump took office.

In June, the United Nations said it was drastically scaling back its global humanitarian aid plans due to the “deepest funding cuts ever”.

- ‘Fear and tension’ -

Relatively shallow quakes can cause more damage, especially since the majority of Afghans live in low-rise, mud-brick homes vulnerable to collapse.

“There is a lot of fear and tension… Children and women were screaming. We had never experienced anything like this in our lives,” Ijaz Ulhaq Yaad, a member of the agricultural department in Nurgal told AFP.

In a post shared by the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened by the significant loss of life” caused by the quake.

Many living in quake-hit villages were among the more than four million Afghans who have returned to the country from Iran and Pakistan in recent years.

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates.

In October 2023, western Herat province was devastated by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed more than 1,500 people and damaged or destroyed more than 63,000 homes.

A 5.9-magnitude quake struck the eastern province of Paktika in June 2022, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

Ravaged by four decades of war, Afghanistan is already contending with a series of humanitarian crises.

Since the return of the Taliban in 2021, foreign aid to Afghanistan has been slashed, undermining the impoverished nation’s already hamstrung ability to respond to disasters.

Around 85 percent of the Afghan population lives on less than one dollar a day, according to the UN Development Programme.