Aid workers in Afghanistan are losing hope that more survivors could be found in the mountainous region devastated by Sunday's earthquake, with rescue efforts still hampered by road conditions.
Local director for Concern Worldwide told RTÉ News said he was "in shock" after traveling to the Kunar province.
The area in eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan was the most severely hit by the 6.0-magnitude quake.
Shahzad Jamil described the area as a multitude of vast valleys with remote villages - previously connected by roads but now cut off by landslides.
His team had to walk for hours to reach one of the valleys - all while the aftershocks of the earthquake were still being felt and rocks "kept falling all the time".
The aid worker said he witnessed "complete destruction" in the valley of Chawkay.
Every household was either partially damaged or completely flattened.
The mudbrick homes built in those areas are particularly vulnerable to collapse.
"They are just rocks and no other material" to hold it together, Mr Jamil explained.
The death toll has been rising sharply in the past 48 hours, surpassing 1,400 people, according to the Taliban administration, with thousands more injured and transported to hospitals in the nearby city of Jalalabad, already overwhelmed with patients.
Helicopters were deployed by authorities to airlift those affected by the disaster, as road access was almost completely cut off.
The terrain is so inhospitable that on some occasions even helicopters could not find a proper landing spots and reach those in need.
The Concern representative, who travelled to the area from Kabul, noted that women and children were moved to a makeshift camp on lower altitudes but remained in "a dangerous area" prone to further tremors and landslides.
Mr Jamil described the arrangement as "hundreds of women and children cramped in a few tents, each roughly 40 square metres."
"I haven’t seen any sanitation facilities around those camps", the aid worker said, adding the lack of any "systematic aid" coming in from NGOs, who are likely still assessing the situation.
Following the return of the Taliban in 2021, the war-torn country faced multiple humanitarian crises, including earthquakes and floods, as well as a sharp decrease in foreign aid - to $767 million this year, down from $3.8 billion in 2022.
Afghanistan has been badly affected since US President Donald Trump's administration in January began funding cuts to its humanitarian arm USAID.
Humanitarian funding "insufficient", says UN Secretary
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called current humanitarian funding "insufficient" to address the needs in the wake of Afghanistan's earthquake, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
He called for additional resources "to be urgently dispatched to respond to the tragedy".
The Taliban authorities have called on the international community for more support.
The UK said it has allocated emergency funding support of £1 million but will channel it through partners in the UN and the International Red Cross, to bypass the Taliban.
The EU, China and Pakistan also pledged humanitarian support.
Located at the junction of the Eurasia and India tectonic plates, Afghanistan is no stranger to powerful earthquakes.
A 6.1-magnitude earthquake that killed 1,000 people in the eastern region in 2022 was the first major natural disaster faced by the Taliban government.
There was loss not only of family members and homes, but also of all or at least half of their livestock, according to Shahzad Jamil.
"They have nothing else when it comes to income," the aid worker said.
With the scale of the devastation, he suspects that many will not be returning to their villages and will have to try and settle in cities.
