KABUL, Sept 04 (AFP): More than 2,200 people were killed in the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan at the weekend, according to the latest toll from the Taliban authorities.
The vast majority of the total 2,217 dead and nearly 4,000 injured were in the mountainous Kunar province near the border with Pakistan, deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat wrote on X on Thursday, adding that "rescue efforts are still ongoing".
The magnitude-6.0 earthquake that jolted the mountainous region bordering Pakistan late Sunday is one of the deadliest in the country in decades.
The toll -- 1,469 dead and more than 3,700 injured-will likely rise, deputy Taliban government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said on Thursday.
"Additional bodies were recovered during these efforts, leading to an increase in the reported casualties," Fitrat wrote on X, adding that a new toll would be released later in the day.
"We cannot stop hoping" that injured people remain alive under the rubble, he told AFP.
Limited access to the hardest hit areas of mountainous Kunar province delayed rescue and relief efforts, with rockfalls from repeated aftershocks obstructing already precarious roads etched onto the side of cliffs.
While most of the areas that had been unreachable were accessed by Wednesday, expectations of finding survivors were fading fast.
"Many survivors are still believed to be trapped beneath collapsed homes in remote villages, and the window for finding them alive is rapidly closing," the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement late on Wednesday.
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