The U.N. Children’s Agency said Friday that at least 1,172 children were among the more than 2,200 people killed in last month’s earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, making children more than half the overall death toll.

In an online briefing for UN Geneva, Tajudeen Oyewale, UNICEF’s representative in Afghanistan, said that these numbers meant that children accounted for more than half of the overall death toll.

"We launched a response plan of $22 million to reach 400,000 people, including 212,000 children, over the next six months in the most affected areas in eastern Afghanistan," he added.

The 6.0-magnitude quake, which struck remote areas in Afghanistan on August 31, has affected up to 500,000 people, including some Afghans recently returned from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, according to the United Nations.

Afghanistan, particularly the Hindu Kush region, is prone to deadly earthquakes, including one in 2022 that killed more than 1,000 people.

Speaking at the same briefing, Arafat Jamal, UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, urged Pakistan and neighboring countries to uphold their humanitarian commitments to Afghan refugees.

"The country to which they're returning, is a country that is suffering from crisis upon crisis upon crisis. There is poverty, with 70% of the people suffering poverty. There is a drought, there are human rights abuses, and now as my colleague Tajudeen said eloquently put it, the people are suffering from yet another earthquake.”