UN appeals for $400m for Afghanistan’s earthquake recovery
The United Nations on Wednesday urgently appealed for 402.9 million dollars to support critical recovery and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan’s Herat province, which was struck by a devastating earthquake last October.
Together with the World Bank, the European Union, and the Asian Development Bank, the UN had assessed that 164.4 million dollars is needed for housing alone.
According to the UN figures, the earthquakes damaged nearly 50,000 homes. More than 13,000 were completely destroyed.
After housing, education and agriculture were the second and third most impacted sectors.
In October, a series of quakes with magnitudes of up to 6.3 rocked Afghanistan’s western province of Herat.
The UN said the quakes killed around 1,500 people and injured nearly 2,000 others.
Dozens of villages were completely flattened, and people took to camping out in the open for fear of further tremors.