GAYAN, Afghanistan (AP) — When the ground heaved from last week’s earthquake in Afghanistan, Nahim Gul’s stone-and-mud house collapsed on top of him.
He clawed through the rubble in the pre-dawn darkness, choking on dust as he searched for his father and two sisters. He doesn’t know how many hours of digging passed before he caught a glimpse of their bodies under the ruins. They were dead.
Now, days after a 6 magnitude quake that devastated a remote region of southeast Afghanistan and killed at least 1,150 people and injured hundreds more, Gul sees destruction everywhere and help in short supply. His niece and nephew were also killed in the quake, crushed by the walls of their house.
“I don’t know what will happen to us or how we should restart our lives,” Gul told The Associated Press on Sunday, his hands bruised and his shoulder injured. “We don’t have any money to rebuild.”
It’s a fear shared among thousands in the impoverished villages where the fury of the quake has fallen most heavily — in Paktika and Khost provinces, along the jagged mountains that straddle the country’s border with Pakistan.
