Zakiullah Atal, a religious scholar, was asleep at the Islamic seminary he works at in the Gayan district of Afghanistan’s Paktika province when he was awakened early Wednesday to the sound of screams from his students.
Miraculously, he said, the earthquake in eastern Afghanistan did not hurt anyone at the religious school. But less than 1000 meters away, the roofs of his house and his brother’s house collapsed.
Mr Zakiullah’s 1-year-old son, Osman, was murdered along with his brother and sister-in-law and three of their children.
More than 200 people have been killed in Gayan district, he said. In his village, Tery, most of the houses have collapsed or damaged, he said.
“Everyone here cried from night to morning,” he said.
Aid began arriving in Gayan on Thursday, as Taliban government helicopters dropped sacks of bread and relief supplies amid crowds of waiting villagers. But the quake has left Tery and other villages uninhabitable, Mr Zakiullah said, adding that residents were desperate for the government and humanitarian agencies to provide tents for families, whose income largely depends on collecting pine nuts from the mountainous forests nearby.
With rain pelting the area and flattening houses, he said, “Some people live outside.”