KABUL − One of Afghanistan's worst earthquakes killed more than 800 people and injured at least 2,800, authorities said on Sept. 1, as helicopters ferried the wounded to hospital after they were plucked from the rubble of homes being combed for survivors.

The disaster is set to further stretch the resources of the war-torn nation's Taliban administration, already grappling with humanitarian crises, from a sharp drop in aid to the pushback of hundreds of thousands of Afghans by neighboring countries.

Sharafat Zaman, the spokesperson for the health ministry in Kabul, called for international aid to tackle the devastation from the quake of magnitude 6 that struck around midnight, at a depth of 6 miles.

"We need it because here lots of people lost their lives and houses," he told Reuter

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