Colorful blankets brighten up an otherwise bleak outlook: Sunday's earthquake was one of the most severe in Afghanistan's history, reaching a magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale. According to Afghan authorities and the UN, around 1,400 people lost their lives in the northeastern Kunar province. Many are still trapped under the rubble.

Kunar province lies in a mountainous region. Following the deadly earthquake, a number of roads were blocked due landslides and rockfall. Rescue teams are still unable to reach some of the villages affected, an Afghan official told the AFP news agency on Wednesday. Until the roads can be cleared, they will remain widely cut off from aid and emergency services.

In order to reach villages cut off by landslides and rockfall, aid teams sometimes have to walk for miles carrying medical equipment and food supplies. Hundreds of helicopters have also being deployed. These girls near Mazar Dara were able to receive help. One of them had sustained a head injury, but is well on her way to recovery.

Rescue efforts are proving difficult. In some cases, rescuers have to dig with their bare hands. Heavy equipment is hard to come by. China and Britain have pledged emergency assistance to Afghanistan. The World Health Organization (WHO) is sending medicines and medical personnel. German aid organizations, including Diakonie and Caritas International, are providing funds for emergency relief.

In Sepero village, men are digging a row of graves for the many people who died in the recent earthquake. Islamic burial rites require that the deceased are buried as quickly as possible. The Afghan authorities expect the death toll to rise further, as recovery work has been difficult in inaccessible areas.

A girl stands in front of her home in the village of Mazar Dara in Kunar province. Afghanistan's Taliban government has imposed restrictive policies, especially on women and girls. As a result, many donor countries had scaled back aid and relations to the country. The Taliban's policies include a ban on women to work in NGOs, making it difficult for females to access privacy-sensitive support.

According to Afghanistan's government, military helicopters have been on the move over the past two days, bringing some 2,000 injured people and their relatives to hospitals. They've also been transporting medical and food supplies. A small mobile clinic was set up in the village of Mazar Dara in Kunar. International aid has also begun to arrive.

A woman in a burqa leaves a university in Kandahar province. She won't be allowed to return. In a government statement Tuesday, the hardline Islamist Taliban instructed all universities in Afghanistan, private and public, to ban women from attending. As of now, all female students are barred from universities.

Taliban control the entrance to a university in Kabul the day after the university ban was imposed. Female students are told they cannot go in. The ban is set to remain in place indefinitely. There have, however, already been some signs of protest at the universities: Male students walked out of an exam, and some male teachers went on strike.

Some restrictions had already been put in place before now. After the Taliban took power in August 2021, universities had to separate entrances and classrooms by gender. Women could only be taught by other women or by old men. This picture shows how screens separated an area for female students at Kandahar University.

These female students at Benawa University in Kandahar were still able to graduate in March with degrees in engineering and computer science. The renewed restriction of women's rights in Afghanistan has come in for heavy international criticism. Human Rights Watch called the university ban a "shameful decision," while the UN said it violated women's human rights.

Thousands of girls and women took university entrance exams as recently as October —as here, at Kabul University. Many wanted to study medicine or become teachers. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the university ban "not only violates the equal rights of women and girls, but will have a devastating impact on the country's future."

The ban on university attendance is yet another restriction on educational opportunities for women and girls. For over a year now, teenage girls have only been able to attend secondary school up to seventh grade in most parts of the country. These girls walking to school in eastern Afghanistan are lucky: Some of the provinces away from the Taliban's central powerbases are ignoring the ban.

Girls and women are now excluded from most aspects of Afghan public life. They haven't been allowed to visit gyms or parks in Kabul for months. Even this amusement park in the capital is off-limits to female visitors. The Taliban justify the ban by saying regulations on the separation of the sexes were not being observed, and women were not wearing the headscarf as required by the Taliban.

Women gather saffron flowers in Herat province. This is work they are allowed to do, unlike most other professions. Since coming to power, the Taliban have enacted a great many regulations that hugely restrict the lives of women and girls. For example, they are forbidden from traveling without a male companion and must wear the hijab or burqa outside their home at all times.

Many Afghan women refuse to accept the abolition of their rights. These women were demonstrating in Kabul in November. A placard, in English, reads "Horrific Condition of Afghan Women Is A Blot of Shame to the World Conscience." Anyone who dares to protest requires a great deal of courage. Demonstrators risk beatings and imprisonment, and women's rights activists are persecuted in Afghanistan.