People help with search and rescue operations at a collapsed building after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook Afghanistan in the Spera district of Khost Province, on June 22, 2022. The death toll has hit 1,000, disaster management officials said, with more than 600 injured and the toll expected to grow as information trickles in from remote mountain villages. Photo: VCG

Thousands affected by a deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan are in need of clean water and food and are at risk of disease, an Afghan health ministry official said on Sunday, days after a UN agency warned of a cholera outbreak in the region.

At least 1,000 people were killed, 2,000 injured and 10,000 homes destroyed in Wednesday's earthquake, after which the UN humanitarian office (OCHA) warned that cholera outbreaks in the aftermath are of particular and serious concern. 

"The people are extremely needy for food and clean water," Afghanistan's health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman told Reuters, adding officials had managed medicines for now but handling those who had lost their homes would be a challenge.

"We ask the international community, humanitarian organizations to help us for food and medicine, the survivor might catch diseases because they don't have proper houses and shelters for living," he said.

The disaster is a major test for Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers, who have been shunned by many foreign governments due to concerns about human rights since they seized control of the country in 2021.

Helping thousands of Afghans is also a challenge for countries that had imposed sanctions on Afghan government bodies and banks, cutting off direct assistance, leading to a humanitarian crisis even before the earthquake.

The UN and several other countries have rushed aid to the affected areas, with more due to arrive over the coming days.

Afghanistan's Taliban administration called for a rolling back of sanctions and lifting a freeze on billions of dollars in central bank assets stashed in Western financial institutions. 

In Kabul, hospitals more used to treat victims of war have opened their wards to earthquake victims, but a majority of people remain in the areas destroyed by the earthquake.

"Our houses were destroyed; we have no tent... there are lots of children with us. We have nothing. Our food and clothes...everything is under rubble," Hazrat Ali, 18, told a Reuters team in Wor Kali, a village of the hardest-hit Barmal district.

"I have lost my brothers; my heart is broken. Now we are just two. I loved them a lot."

After the earthquake disaster in Afghanistan, the Chinese government has decided to provide 50 million yuan ($7.46 million) of emergency humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Saturday.

Spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks in response to a query on the progress of China's emergency humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.

Aid provided by China will include tents, towels, folding beds and other materials urgently needed by the Afghan people, he said.

In the next step, China will coordinate closely with the Afghan interim government to ensure that relief supplies are delivered to those in need as soon as possible, and to help the Afghan people tide over their current difficulties, Wang said.

Agencies