Key Points
- Afghan cricket star Rashid Khan has announced he will not take home his earnings from the 2023 World Cup.
- He said he would instead donate his fees to help those affected by deadly earthquakes in Afghanistan on the weekend.
- The Taliban administration says at least 2,445 people have been killed and over 9,000 injured.
Afghan cricket star Rashid Khan has announced he will donate all his match fees from the 2023 Cricket World Cup in India to support victims of an earthquake in his home country.
The Taliban administration says at least 2,445 people have been killed after two earthquakes hit Afghanistan on Saturday.
Khan, who is reportedly Afghanistan's highest-paid player and who plays for the Adelaide Strikers in Australia's Big Bash League, said he also plans to launch a fundraising campaign to support those affected by the tragedy.
"I learned with great sadness about the tragic consequences of the earthquake that struck the western provinces (Herat, Farah, and Badghis) of Afghanistan," he wrote on Instagram and X.
"I am donating all of my match fees to help the affected people. Soon, we will be launching a fundraising campaign to call upon those who can support the people in need."
The earthquakes are the deadliest tremors to rock the quake-prone mountainous country in years.
Janan Sayeeq, spokesman for the Ministry of Disasters, said in a message to Reuters that the toll had risen to 2,445 dead but he revised down the number of injured to "more than 2,000".
Earlier, he had said that 9,240 people had been injured. Sayeeq also said 1,320 houses had been damaged or destroyed.
The death toll spiked from 500 reported in the morning by the Red Crescent and 16 on Saturday night.
Ten rescue teams were in the area of the province, which borders Iran, Sayeeq told a press conference.
More than 200 dead had been brought to various hospitals, a Herat health department official who identified himself as Dr Danish told Reuters, adding most of them were women and children.
Food, drinking water, medicine, clothes and tents were urgently needed for rescue and relief, the head of the Taliban's political office in Qatar, Suhail Shaheen, said in a message to journalists.
Afghanistan's health care system, reliant almost entirely on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and most other forms of international assistance, which formed the backbone of the economy, were halted.
