Afghan women were buried alive in earthquake because they were afraid to leave home without a hijab on and rescue workers would not break Taliban rules on ‘mixing’ with females

Afghan women were buried alive in their homes after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake because they were afraid to go outside without a headscarf, it has emerged.

Rescue efforts after the October 7 earthquake, which struck western Afghanistan and killed more than 2,000 people, were also hampered by a Taliban directive banning women and men who do not know each other from mingling.

An anonymous female rescuer told the Telegraph that the arbitrary rules made male rescuers reluctant to help women, leading to a higher death toll among women.

U.N. aid agencies said 90 percent of the victims in one major city, Herat, were women and children.

“Most of the patients were women and children because they were at home when the earthquake struck,” said Dr. Qasem Sadat, a health official in the region.

The Taliban have increasingly locked women in their homes in recent years

Many women died in the earthquake because they were afraid of what would happen if they left their home without a headscarf

Male rescuers were reluctant to save women’s lives because of a strict Taliban directive that prevents men from mingling with unknown women

One UN representative claimed that if the earthquake had hit Afghanistan at night, the gender inequality would have been much less pronounced as men would have been at home instead of at work.

Women are increasingly confined to their homes as the Taliban have tightened rules on what women can and cannot do in the past two years.

The UN revealed that several women affected by the earthquake were unable to access aid without the national identity card of a male relative.

Cultural norms have made it impossible for women to share tents with their neighbors or other relatives, the UN said.

“When natural disasters strike, women and girls are the most affected and often the least considered when it comes to crisis response and recovery,” Alison Davidian, the UN Special Representative for Women in Afghanistan, said in a message to the Associated Press at the time The earthquake.

Several thousand people were killed in the earthquake. One UN official said that if the earthquake occurred at night, the gender disparity in deaths would be much less pronounced. In the photo: Afghans bury victims of the earthquake in western Afghanistan

Women have reported difficulties in obtaining assistance without a national identity card from a male relative

Entire villages were leveled by the magnitude 6.3 earthquake, followed by several more tremors

“The earthquakes, combined with the ongoing humanitarian and women’s rights crisis, have made the situation not only difficult for women and girls, but deadly.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said earlier this month that the earthquake, which was followed by several other smaller tremors, destroyed more than 21,500 homes and seriously damaged more than 17,000.

This has left around 154,000 people in dire straits, and in some cases has almost completely destroyed villages in the region.

The UN said 15 villages have been destroyed so far, while 41 have been moderately or severely affected.

A spokesperson for Afghanistan’s National Disaster Management Authority said shortly after the earthquake that ‘some villages may have a thousand or more people living in them. There were 300 houses. Only 100 people survived.’