Rescuers in Afghanistan are racing against time to look for survivors in the rubble of collapsed mud and stone homes after a powerful earthquake left over 1,000 people dead.

The quake — one of Afghanistan's worst — struck the country's eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar on Monday with a magnitude of 6.0 at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles).

The midnight earthquake was followed by at least five aftershocks. Several remote villages in the mountainous provinces were affected in the calamity.

The Afghan Red Crescent Society aid group said Tuesday that the death toll from the quake increased to 1,124, with 3,251 more people injured and more than 8,000 homes destroyed. A Taliban government spokesperson put the number of people killed by the quake at 1,411.

The UN on Tuesday said the number of people impacted by the earthquake could reach "hundreds of thousands."

"We think potentially the impacted individuals would go up to almost into the hundreds of thousands," Indrika Ratwatte, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Kabul."

Rescue efforts on Tuesday were focused on reaching the isolated areas after operations were conducted in four villages in Kunar the previous day, news agencies cited Ehsanullah Ehsan, the provincial head of disaster management, as saying.

He said there were "still injured people left in the distant villages" who needed evacuations to hospitals.

Rescue hampered by mountainous terrain

The tough terrain and adverse weather conditions have hindered relief operations.

Ehsan told agencies that gaining access for vehicles on the narrow mountain roads along the Pakistan border was the main challenge.

He added that machinery was being brought in to clear roads of debris.

Reports said that villagers had joined rescuers and were using their bare hands to clear the wreckage of homes built into steep valleys.

Meanwhile, bodies were wrapped in white shrouds as the villagers prayed over the dead before burying them.

Afghanistan earthquake exacerbates foreign aid woes

Afghanistan is in the midst of a protracted humanitarian crisis after decades of conflict. It is also dealing with an influx of millions of Afghans forced back to the country by neighbors Pakistan and Iran in recent years.

Foreign aid to the country — which is among the world's poorest —  has been slashed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, further affecting Afghanistan's already crippled ability to respond to disasters.

On Monday, United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric issued a statement saying that an initial $5 million (about €4.2 million)was released from the international body's emergency fund to help the victims of the earthquake.

The statement stressed that the current humanitarian funding is "insufficient" to address the needs of disaster-stricken Afghanistan.

Edited by: Sean Sinico