People dug through the rubble of the quake in western Afghanistan for their few possessions but the material losses seemed unimportant. Saturday's 6.3 magnitude quake killed and injured thousands when it levelled an untold number of homes in Herat province. Picking through the rubble on Monday, Asadullah Khan paused to think about a future marred by grief. Khan lost three daughters, his mother and his sister-in-law. Five members of his uncle's family have died. His neighbours are grief-stricken, too.

"We have lost 23 people in this village," Khan said. Mounds of rubble flank the road winding through Zinda Jan district. Some door frames remain standing. There were few people in sight on Monday. The Taliban-appointed deputy prime minister for economic affairs, Abdul Ghani Baradar, and his team visited the quake-affected region Monday to deliver "immediate relief assistance" and ensure "equitable and accurate distribution of aid," authorities said. Top U.N officials also went to Zinda Jan to assess the extent of the damage. And in neighbouring Pakistan, the government held a special session to review aid for Afghanistan, including relief teams, food, medicine, tents and blankets. The Taliban's supreme leader has made no public comments about the quake. Afghanistan has few reliable statistics but a spokesman for Afghanistan's national disaster authority, Janan Sayiq, told reporters in Kabul that around 4,000 people were killed or injured by the disaster.