Disaster just adds to woe of drought and minefields

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Afghan quake leaves 2,000 dead and 30,000 homeless

Earthquake rocks region where death is familiar

Most of the 85,000 people of Nahrin in Baghlan province were already dependent on food and other aid supplies when yesterday's earthquakes struck.

Like much of northern Afghanistan, Nahrin, in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, has suffered four years of drought which has turned a formerly prosperous and productive land into a barren wilderness.

It was also the second time the area has been hit by quakes. A series of smaller tremors struck earlier this month. Almost all the emergency supplies – babyfood, warm clothing, tents and medicine – stockpiled by the agencies have now been lost.

The province, south-east of Mazar-i-Sharif, is in the fiefdom of the Northern Alliance warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who now holds the post of deputy defence minister in Hamid Karzai's government.

According to aid workers, General Dostum's administration had been working fairly efficiently in helping to distribute aid and put up shelter in the Nahrin area.

But the quakes have made the task of getting replacements to the stricken towns and villages extremely difficult. Two of the three usable roads into the region are now blocked. In addition a crash has put the Salang Tunnel out of action, the recently reopened key route from Kabul to the north.

Rescuers also face mines, and unexploded ordnance. Guy Willoughby, director of the Halo Trust, a demining group, said last night: "There are a lot of anti-tank mines on the road into Nahrin. The town was on the front line between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, and the Alliance laid a lot of mines."

Ros O'Sullivan, of Concern, an international aid agency, said: "This was considered a frontline area in the past two or three years, identified as high-risk [for] malnuitrition. Already about 80 per cent of the population are receiving relief supplies. The place is still accessible, although it's a very bad road. Food and shelter are the two priorities. People are out in the open."

A team from the United Nations, aid agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arrived from Mazar-i-Sharif to assess the damage, taking hundreds of tents and blankets, ICRC and UN officials said.

Russia, a traditional supporter of General Dostum, plans to send a mobile clinic and supplies through one of the former Soviet republics in central Asia.

The independent aid agencies ACTED and Médecins Sans Frontières reached the quake region yeseterday and distributed 500 tents and 1,000 blankets, said UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs in Geneva.

The World Food Programme meanwhile shipped 158 tons of food to the disaster area – including wheat, oil, legumes and high-protein biscuits – and planned to send another 394 tons today. The United Nations and the European Commission also were rushing emergency aid to the scene.