TEHRAN -- Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian says Iran is ready to provide more medical assistance to Afghanistan in the wake of a devastating earthquake that has killed more than 1,150 people and caused enormous damage.
Iran dispatched two cargo planes carrying first aid supplies to its neighbor after the Wednesday disaster.
“Like in the past, we stand by Afghanistan’s honorable and patient people,” Amir-Abdollahian told the Taliban government’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi over the phone.
A 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck about 44 kilometers from the eastern Afghan city of Khost early on Wednesday, which local officials described as the deadliest in two decades.
In 2002, a magnitude-6.1 earthquake killed around 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan, and before that in 1998 a magnitude-6.1 earthquake and subsequent tremors in northeast Afghanistan resulted in the death of at least 4,500 people.
Amir-Abdollahian touched on the deployment of a team of medical experts from the Iranian Red Crescent Society to Afghanistan in the aftermath of the quake, saying Iran is ready to send more teams if needed.
Muttaqi expressed gratitude to the Islamic Republic for its assistance, saying providing shelter for the affected people is most urgently needed.
The disaster poses fresh challenge to Afghanistan’s new rulers and relief agencies that are already struggling with a rapidly worsening humanitarian crises precipitated by the botched exit of US-led foreign forces last year and freeze on Afghan assets.
According to aid agencies, around 19 million Afghans — nearly half of the country’s population — are grappling with severe food shortages in a crisis that aggravated dramatically since the U.S.-led foreign forces withdrew last August.
The Biden administration’s decision to freeze Afghanistan’s nearly $9 billion assets and distribute some part of it as compensation to the victims of the 9/11 attacks has been strongly denounced by human rights activists.
On Thursday, Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations, urged the United States to unfreeze the assets belonging to the Afghan people.
“As we have repeatedly stated, Afghanistan’s frozen assets belong to the Afghan people, and their release, which is crucial for helping the Afghan economy and saving lives, should not be politicized or conditional in any way,” he said in an address to the UN Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan.
Muttaqi welcomed the idea of Iran dispatching of team of experts to discuss the issue of sharing water flowing into the Iranian plateau from Afghanistan.