This past Thursday, in the southeast of Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, many villages were destroyed in an earthquake. Not only was the earthquake the strongest in decades, but also the houses affected were not well built, according to The New York Times.

Even before the earthquake, people in southeast Afghanistan were not doing well. Afghanistan is among the poorest countries in the world. The villagers were unaware that the earthquake was going to happen and thus were unprepared for its devastating effects. The earthquake happened at night, when people were asleep and inside their structurally unsound village houses. The earthquake’s epicenter was also very shallow, and the shockwaves reached the surface without being dampened by the land.

After the earthquake, the villagers could not even receive sufficient aid because the Taliban takeover hindered communication between Afghanistan and the outside world. These villages are in a very mountainous, sparsely populated area very hard to access by road. The people who have escaped are mourning for the ones they have lost.