Afghanistan earthquake: Switzerland pays more into UN fund
Rescue workers on Monday help people searching for victims amid rubble of destroyed houses after an earthquake in Zinda Jan district of Herat, Afghanistan
Keystone / Samiullah Popal
Following the devastating earthquake in Afghanistan, Switzerland is paying additional money into a United Nations relief fund. The Swiss contribution now amounts to CHF3.8 million ($4.2 million).
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Terremoto en Afganistán: Suiza aporta más al fondo de la ONU
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has already paid CHF1.5 million into the Afghan Humanitarian Fund, the foreign ministry said on Monday. The funds will now be increased.
The fund has been administered by the UN since 2014 and makes it possible to respond to natural disasters, it said.
According to the foreign ministry website, the budget for Swiss aid to the Afghan population in the current year amounts to about CHF30 million. Just under half of the money will go to the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and international financial institutions such as the World Bank; 53% of the money goes to non-governmental organisations.
On Saturday morning several earthquakes shook the inhabitants of the Afghan border province of Herat near Iran. Within just a few hours, the earth shook nine times and more than a dozen villages were largely destroyed. The two most severe quakes had a magnitude of 6.3, according to the US earthquake observatory USGS.
According to the Afghan broadcaster Tolonews, at least 2,400 people have died so far; the UN emergency relief agency OCHA spoke of more than 1,000 dead. Several aftershocks also shook the disaster region on Monday.
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