<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Labourer Rasool Badshah has moved into a new home six months after a deadly earthquake rocked eastern Afghanistan, but without his mother, who was killed by collapsing walls.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">More than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands made homeless after the 5.9-magnitude quake -- the deadliest in Afghanistan in nearly a quarter of a century -- struck the impoverished province of Paktika on June 22.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When I reached here, my mother, brothers, everyone was already buried," Badshah, 21, told AFP, explaining how he rushed back to his village from Pakistan, where he was working.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hundreds of earthquake-resilient concrete homes, many built by local labourers with the support of the United Nations refugee agency, have now been handed over to survivors who were until now living in makeshift tent cities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We couldn't have built these houses, not even our children or grandchildren (could have)... we could not afford it. We were living in huts," Badshah said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The UNHCR said the new homes are equipped with solar panels, independent toilets and traditional heaters to help residents face harsh winters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even before the earthquake, Afghanistan was in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover in August 2021.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">International development funding on which the South Asian country relied dried up after the takeover and assets held abroad were frozen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The remote east where the quake struck had been neglected by authorities for years, said survivor Bara Khan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"After the earthquake, people came and saw that residents of the area were in trouble. We don't even have a clinic or a school," Khan said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Everybody has grown up illiterate."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The UNHCR will start work to build two schools and a clinic in the area, still strewn with rubble, after the winter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>