Image source, Shutterstock

The sun is setting in Afghanistan after a 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit the nation's mountainous eastern border region overnight.

The quake struck at a shallow depth of 8km (5 miles), making it more destructive. Worst-hit are the Nangarhar and Kunar provinces, but shakes were felt in neighbouring provinces, as well as in Kabul and in neighbouring Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

More than 800 people are known to have died, UN agency Ocha says, and at least 2,000 people are estimated to be injured. Details are still emerging about the full extent of the destruction, but Ocha believes as many as 12,000 people are impacted, including by damaged buildings and infrastructure.

It could be some time before we have a full picture of the disaster: the mountainous region has posed issues for rescuers, who have been inhibited in their efforts by the remote terrain, which makes access to some areas difficult.

For now, we are pausing our live coverage. But we'll be keeping this piece up to date with the latest as we receive it - thanks for joining us.

Yama Bariz
Reporting from Nangarhar province

We’ve been at the Nangarhar Regional Hospital, the province's main hospital, for the past hour. Many of the injured that were airlifted from remote areas have been brought here for treatment.

I’ve seen at least four ambulances bring victims to the hospital. It’s quite chaotic with injured, helpless relatives looking for their loved ones, while volunteers and rescue teams rush around nearby.

I spoke to a doctor here who told me that around 460 victims of the earthquake have been brought to this hospital so far. Of these 250 have been hospitalized, while the others were given treatment and discharged.

I met an old woman who was distraught as she had lots some of her family in the quake. She was inconsolable. I saw another old man who was dazed, he looked lost. They weren’t in a condition to speak to anyone; they were crying, some loudly, some silently. They are still in shock. Both of them were from Kanur, but victims from Nangarhar have also been brought to this hospital.

Another doctor I spoke to told me that they were stretched thin, as there were hundreds of patients in the hospital, well beyond its capacity.

They said they had received help from NGOs, and although they’re trying they best to treat as many patients as possible, it was not going to be enough.

I could speak with some people who were visiting their injured relatives, and they kept on repeating that the devastation they’ve seen has been massive. They told me that they were asleep when their houses collapsed on them.

Men are donating blood in Kandahar in south Afghanistan, the country's second largest city. Take a look at some of the images from the blood drive below.

Image source, EPA/Shutterstock

Image source, EPA/Shutterstock

Image source, EPA/Shutterstock

Image source, Getty Images

The international community is rallying around Afghanistan following news of the deadly earthquake in the country's Kunar and Nangarhar provinces.

India will support Afghanistan "in this hour of need," the country's external affairs minister says. Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says the "devastating" earthquake in the Kunar province is "a matter of deep concern" and adds that India will offer support and solidarity to Afghans.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shebhaz Sharif says his country "stands in solidarity with our Afghan brothers and sisters in this hour of grief," adding that Pakistan will offer "all possible support".

Japan's ambassador to Afghanistan, Takayoshi Kuromiya, says he is "deeply grieved and saddened" to hear news of the earthquake. Kuromiya says Japan is is monitoring the situation and stands ready to support those affected.

The Afghan Red Cross says its teams, alongside medical teams, rushed to the affected provinces and are providing emergency assistance to impacted families.

The European Union has extended its "heartfelt condolences," saying the bloc's humanitarian partners remain "actively on the ground" providing aid to those affected.

And the UN says it has teams on the ground in Afghanistan who are delivering emergency assistance and "life-saving support".

Hafizullah Maroof
BBC Afghan Service

“The scale of devastation is unimaginable, entire villages are flattened, roads to deep mountainous areas are still closed. So now, for us, the priority is not finding dead under the rubble, but rather reaching out to those injured.”

These are the words of a high-profile Taliban official in Kunar province organising helicopters to the hard-hit areas.

“Most of the dead bodies are under rubble. We are doing everything, but it doesn’t seem possible soon” he says.

Rescue teams are struggling to reach out to wounded people as significant numbers are waiting to be airlifted by helicopters as landslides have closed most of roads, he adds.

Image source, Shutterstock

Photos from the village of Mazar Dara, in the Kunar province, show people affected by Sunday night's earthquake taking refuge in a field.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Verifying footage posted from Afghanistan earthquakepublished at 13:58 BST 1 September

13:58 BST 1 September

By Shruti Menon

We are gathering information and footage being shared online following the earthquake that has struck Afghanistan.

The affected area is mountainous, access is limited and communications are poor. Rescuers are also being hampered by landslides triggered by the earthquake.

The Afghan Red Crescent has released footage showing rescuers carrying a person on a stretcher down a mountainous road in Kunar province. The video shows the kind of terrain that relief teams are working in.

For those of us working on open-source material, there’s an added challenge of sparse imagery and information from these locations due to its remoteness and few reliable sources available to cross-check.

Image source, Source: x.com/@ARCSAfghanistan

We have verified one video showing an ambulance entering a medical facility. We first checked the footage is new and then confirmed the location by matching images of Asadabad provincial hospital.

We’ll continue to monitor footage and bring you more verified material throughout the day.

The UN's humanitarian agency says preliminary reports indicate at least 800 have died across four provinces in Afghanistan following the 6.0-magnitude quake.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) says at least 2,000 people are estimated to be injured, many of them in remote and mountainous areas cut off from access to rescue crews.

At least 12,000 people are believed to be directly impacted by the earthquake, including from damaged buildings or infrastructure Ocha says.

A local resident, who did not give his name, has been describing the devastation caused by the earthquake in Mazar Dara, in Afghanistan's Nurgal region.

He pleas for help for families, saying that up to 95% of his village is destroyed

Watch the translated clip in full below.

Image source, AFP via Getty Images

A special committee has been formed by the prime minister's office to aid victims of the earthquake, the Taliban's chief spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid says in a statement.

The statement adds that a fund has been allocated for the victims, and more money will be made available if needed.

Mujahid says that measures have been taken to evacuate victims and deliver food and other essential supplies to those affected.

Sayed Abdullah Nizami
BBC Afghan Service

I first saw the news on Facebook, where people from our area were posting prayers and talking about something terrible happening.

I called my father, and he told me they had evacuated all the children from the rooms and were sitting awake in the courtyard.

Then I called a friend to find out more. He said he was at the provincial hospital in Asadabad, Kunar.

I asked him to pass the phone to a doctor so I could speak with them - it had been less than an hour since the earthquake.

The doctors told me that dozens of injured people had already arrived at the hospital, most of them university students who had fallen from buildings. One of them had died.

The worst damage was in the mountainous areas. In Nurgal, Kunar, entire villages were destroyed. Rescue teams couldn’t reach them until morning because the roads were blocked, and helicopters couldn’t land in the mountains at night. Many people may have died because they were trapped under the rubble and couldn’t be rescued in time.

Kunar is a rugged, mountainous region with limited farmland. Not all villages are connected by roads.

Women mostly work in the fields - growing crops, caring for livestock, and fetching drinking water.

Healthcare facilities are not available in every village or district.

Recently, refugees from Pakistan have arrived, and I’ve heard that several families are living in very cramped conditions, sometimes more than 10 people in a single room.

Tom Joyner
Live reporter

Deep in the mountainous Kunar province, Syed Raheem stands in the rubble of his neighbour's home.

It could have easily been his that was destroyed, but he has little time to think about it. There is much work to do.

His job means he is responsible for sending teams of emergency workers, including nurses and doctors, to hunt for survivors trapped beneath the rubble in hard-to-reach villages.

And time is fast running out.

His rescuers are pulling out bodies of those killed in the quake alongside the injured. The latter are triaged, with some taken by ambulance or helicopter to Jalalabad, the nearest city, for treatment.

"They saved a lot of people," he tells me in a phone call from the village of Naoabad. "The people of the villages, they are very afraid."

He believes the official death toll is an underestimation. His teams report back that it is likely far higher.

But they are working fast to do as much as they can for those still trapped while there is daylight.

"Some people sent us messages that there are houses that are destroyed, and some people are still under the rocks," he says.

Still, he has his own family to worry about, including a young son.

"After I get home and I stay there. We are not sleeping, we are afraid the earthquake will start again."

Yogita Limaye
South Asia & Afghanistan correspondent

I'm on the road leaving Kabul, heading east into the mountainous area where a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck last night.

Even before I've arrived, it's clear to see from the terrain why access to this region is so challenging.

Yama Bariz
Afghan service correspondent

I’m on my way to the eastern region of Afghanistan, the epicentre of a 6.0-magnitude earthquake. More than 12 hours have now passed since the quake hit the Nangarhar and Kunar provinces.

The Kunar province, which has been the worst-hit, has an extremely mountainous terrain, restricting access. This region has also seen massive flooding and landslides in the past few days blocking access to many areas.

Helicopters have been the only way to access these regions and carry out rescues.

I have spoken to eyewitnesses at the Jalalabad Central Hospital, and they told me that ambulances continue to bring in casualties. They say that hundreds of injured had been brought to the hospital, and there is a huge number of women and children among them. Many hundreds of bodies have also arrived.

I am also speaking to residents near the Kunar region. Communication has been a challenge because internet connectivity is very limited in these areas. Some tell me that entire villages have been flattened, they’re now just a rubble. People are trying hard to evacuate their loved ones, because although the Taliban and other NGO's have sent rescue teams, it’s still not enough.

Local health authorities in Jalababad saythat two entire valleys in Kunar remain inaccessible as landslides have damaged the roads.

They fear that casualties will increase as the hours pass.

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province overnight, with its epicentre striking just 27km (17 miles) away from the city of Jalalabad, the nation's fifth-largest.

Shaking was also felt in Afghanistan's capital Kabul and in neighbouring Pakistan.

If you're just joining us, here's what to know:

• The quake has killed at least 600 people across the Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, leaving 1,500 people injured. Details are still emerging and it is expected the numbers of people killed or injured could grow
• The earthquake was shallow, making it more destructive - our science correspondent Georgina Rannard explains why
• The remoteness of the areas hit by the quake make the search and rescue even harder, our South Asia and Afghanistan correspondent Yogita Limaye reports. She says masses of people are feared trapped under rubble
• Faridullah Fazli, who lives on the banks of the Kunar river, has described the scenes overnight as an "atmosphere of fear and terror"
• Some villages have been completely destroyed, the Taliban government says

Shoaib Sharifi
Editor, BBC Afghan Service

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) as well as the Japanese embassy have already expressed their condolences to the nation and offered assistance.

There are no restrictions on allowing in international aid, and the Taliban government has called for aid agencies to prioritise resources for the assistance of quake-hit areas.

But the abrupt freeze on US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has significantly affected aid delivery.

Jalalabad's main hospital is already overwhelmed, being right at the centre of the crossing point for the tens of thousand Afghans being deported from bordering Pakistan.

A local reporter who visited the hospital said quake victims' relatives have had to leave the hospital to buy medication for their patients themselves.

Image source, Reuters

The UN's humanitarian agency for children (Unicef) says it has local teams on the ground coordinating with local authorities to get a fuller picture of the worst affected areas.

Access by road to the worst-hit areas is still blocked, but there are likely hundreds of homes destroyed, Salam Al Janabi tells the BBC from Unicef's Kabul office.

"Because it's so mountainous, they are kind of built almost on top of each other so everything is toppling on top of each other," he says.

Major priorities for the organisation are health, child protection, water and access to sanitation, says Al Janabi.

Although Afghans all over the country are accustomed to earthquakes, he says that doesn't change the sense of urgency to respond this time around.

"It doesn't matter that you've done this before, whenever something like this happens, it's tragic, it's difficult."

Georgina Rannard
Science correspondent

The size of an earthquake and its distance from Earth’s surface are the two geological factors that determine how much damage will be caused.

This one struck at a depth of 8km (5 miles), which is very shallow for an earthquake. To be classed as a shallow, an earthquake must happen at less than 70km below the surface.

They are more common than deep earthquakes and are more destructive.

Seismic waves travel from where the earthquake occurs to the surface where they cause damage. They lose energy as they travel, so the deeper the earthquake is, the further the waves have to travel, which makes them weaker when they reach the surface.

But when the earthquake happens at shallower depth, the waves keep more of their power when they hit the surface.

That often leads to more intense shaking at the surface, which can cause more damage to buildings and structures, potentially leading to collapse.

Shallow earthquakes are common in Afghanistan, particularly in the foothills of the Himalayas where tectonic plates are sliding past each other.

Shoaib Sharifi
Editor, BBC Afghan Service

Although we aren't seeing any photos of women or children in hospitals, they are certainly among the affected.

A local freelance reporter has just been to Jalalabad's main hospital, where he confirmed there are women there who have been brought by helicopter. But there are far more men in the hospital currently than women, the reporter says.

Kunar is a very conservative area, so for cultural reasons women might end up being treated later. It's feared some women may have chosen to stay, or to wait for daylight to be taken to hospital by their families.

The powerful earthquake in the Paktika province of 2022 saw the number of injured women in hospitals rise two days after the earthquake.

It's important to consider that there are no female rescuers on the ground.

Tom Joyner
Live reporter

When the quake struck at around midnight, Faridullah Fazli was fast asleep at home in Asadabad, on the banks of the Kunar river. The tremor jolted him awake.

"There was a very strong earthquake, accompanied by sounds that were very scary," he tells BBC News over WhatsApp.

"We didn't sleep until morning. After the earthquake, there were small tremors, and there are still."

He got dressed and hurriedly made his way to the clinic in town where a crowd had gathered to see if he could offer his assistance.

He helped transport the dead and wounded into ambulances to be taken to a hospital further south in Nangarhar province.

"It was a very scary situation, just an atmosphere of fear and terror," Fazli says.