Death toll from Afghan quakes crosses 2,000

Bodies buried in mass graves after series of shocks jolt hard-to-reach areas

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The death toll from a series of earthquakes in western Afghanistan rose sharply on Sunday to more than 2,000, the Taliban government said, as bodies continued to be pulled from demolished villages and buried in mass graves.

More than 1,300 homes were toppled when Saturday's magnitude 6.3 quake followed by eight strong aftershocks-jolted hard-to-reach areas 30km northwest of the provincial capital of Herat, according to officials.

In the rural Zinda Jan district, village households were reduced to jumbles of broken masonry, where makeshift rescue teams continued to dig frantic trenches on Sunday.

Aid gradually trickled into the disaster zone including food, water, tents and coffins for the dead who were pulled from the rubble by excavators and men with pickaxes and shovels.

Some of the bodies were shrouded in fleece blankets, as workers used those same tools to excavate their communal graves in the gravelly brown earth.