Just before midnight on August 31, 2025, the steep, mountainous valleys of eastern Afghanistan were rocked by a magnitude 6.0 earthquake, sending shockwaves of destruction through Kunar Province and the surrounding region. In the dead of night, families were jolted awake as their homes—many built of mud and loose stone—crumbled around them. The epicenter, pinpointed in Nurgal District, was roughly 50 kilometers from Jalalabad, but the devastation rippled across the entire province.
For Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak, who leads the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergency office in Jalalabad, the first jolt threw him out of bed. The second sent him scrambling for his phone. “I immediately thought about Herat,” Dr. Sahak recalled, referencing the earthquakes that devastated Afghanistan’s western province in 2023. “I could tell that the impact would be huge as well.”
Within minutes, Dr. Sahak was in contact with his health-cluster WhatsApp group—a thread that links hospitals, clinics, and aid organizations across the region. Reports began trickling in from Asadabad, the capital of neighboring Kunar Province and the hardest-hit area along the Pakistani border. The city’s main hospital was already overwhelmed. By 1 a.m., the calls for help grew more urgent: “We received multiple injuries from different areas and the situation is not good. If possible, provide us with support!”
As Dr. Sahak and his WHO team raced through the dark to their warehouse, monsoon rains began to fall—complicating everything from helicopter landings to ambulance runs. According to the WHO, the aid pipeline quickly clicked into place. A truck loaded with medical supplies was transferred at the Jalalabad airport before a Defense Ministry helicopter airlifted pallets toward Nurgal District, the quake’s epicenter. “Fortunately, we were able to quickly reach the most affected area,” Dr. Sahak said, as reported by the United Nations.
His initial field team numbered just four: himself, a technical adviser, an emergency focal point, and a security assistant. But within hours, Afghan partners from two local NGOs joined the effort, assembling a force of 18 doctors, nurses, and pharmacists—“six of them were female doctors and midwives,” Dr. Sahak noted. On that first day, WHO managed to airlift 23 metric tonnes of medicine to Nurgal District. But the casualty figures kept climbing. Early reports suggested 500 to 600 dead, thousands injured, and thousands of homes destroyed. Five days later, the official toll was grimmer still: more than 2,200 dead, 3,640 injured, and at least 6,700 houses damaged, according to both WHO and Al Jazeera.
When Dr. Sahak and his team reached Nurgal District on Monday afternoon, they found many roads blocked by boulders and landslides, while crowds of civilian volunteers—most of them on foot—rushed to help the victims. “We saw bodies in the street. They were waiting for the people to come in to bury them,” he recounted. Among the survivors was a 60-year-old man named Mohammed, whose house had collapsed. “He had a total of 30 family members living with him…22 of them had died in the earthquake,” Dr. Sahak said. “This was shocking for me. I could not bear to look this man in the eyes. He was tearing up.”
At the local clinic, whose walls were cracked by the tremors, medical staff treated a rapidly growing number of patients beneath tents pitched outside. One woman, suffering from a pelvic fracture, head trauma, and broken ribs, kept crying out. “She kept saying: ‘Where is my baby! I need my baby! Please bring me my baby!’” Dr. Sahak remembered. “No, no, she lost her baby. All of her family.”
According to Al Jazeera, survivors like Gul Rahim lost dozens of family members—Rahim himself lost 63, including his five-year-old daughter Fatima. “We were asleep at home when, at midnight, the earthquake struck. All the houses collapsed and everyone was screaming,” Rahim said. “I managed to get out, but my youngest daughter was trapped inside, crying, ‘Father, get me out of here!’ By the time we reached her, she had passed away. She was my youngest and most beloved daughter.” Rahim added that another hundred or so of his neighbors were killed. “The dead and injured were countless. The earthquake was terrifying, and leads people to despair.”
The majority of victims were from Kunar Province, where most people live in wood and mud-brick homes along steep river valleys. Many villages were reduced to piles of stone and mud. The WHO reported that, as of September 3, at least 6,700 homes had been destroyed. Strong aftershocks continued to rattle the region, injuring at least 10 more people on September 5 and raising fears of further destruction.
Rescue efforts have been hampered by treacherous roads, relentless aftershocks, and limited aid. “Getting here was a harrowing experience,” said Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem. “We were driving for hours on winding cliffside roads, with aftershocks shaking the ground beneath us until we finally made it.” Despite rescue workers “working around the clock,” hope was fading. “The official death toll isn’t final, with so many still missing, the number will most certainly rise.”
In a country where strict gender rules govern public life, the earthquake briefly broke down barriers. “In the first few days, everyone—men and women—was rescuing the people,” Dr. Sahak said. Female doctors and midwives participated actively in rescue and medical efforts, even though, under Taliban rule, they can work only if accompanied by a male relative. However, the deeper crisis is the exodus of female professionals since the Taliban’s return in 2021. “Most of the specialist doctors, particularly the women, left the country…We have difficulty finding professional staff,” Dr. Sahak explained. His own daughter, once a medical student in Kabul, is now unable to complete her education due to the new authorities’ ban on women’s higher education.
As the days passed, the WHO’s task was to keep clinics running by providing technical guidance, medical supplies, and support for exhausted medical staff. By Friday, Dr. Sahak’s ledger told the story: 46 metric tons of medical supplies delivered, more than 15,000 bottles of intravenous fluids distributed, and 17 WHO surveillance teams deployed to track the spread of disease—an urgent concern after the destruction of water sources and sanitation systems. About 800 critical patients had been rushed to Jalalabad hospital, with others taken to the regional hospital in Asadabad.
Winter looms large in the minds of survivors. “What we need most are proper homes to survive the cold,” Rahim pleaded. “I call on the whole world, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to help us. We have lost everything, even our livestock and chickens. Nothing remains.” The region is known for heavy snowfall, and many now live in tents with little protection from the elements.
The WHO has appealed for $4 million to provide “life-saving health interventions” and to support water, sanitation, and hygiene activities for residents. Afghanistan, perched at the meeting point of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, is no stranger to powerful earthquakes. In October 2023, the western province of Herat suffered a similar tragedy, and a year earlier, the eastern provinces of Paktika, Paktia, Khost, and Nangarhar were struck by a magnitude 6.1 quake.
Outside a health facility in Asadabad, Dr. Sahak met two women—mother and daughter—recently discharged, but with no family left to collect them. “They were alive, but their remaining 13 family members were dead,” he said. Moved by their plight, he arranged for the hospital to keep them for a while longer. That night, he recounted the scene to his own family. “All of them were crying, and they were even unable to have dinner,” he said. By then, even his elderly mother no longer begged him to stay home. “Please go there and support the people,” she told him.
In the ledger of loss and resilience, the people of Kunar Province now face the daunting task of rebuilding their lives from the rubble, as the world watches and, hopefully, responds to their urgent plea for help.