Colombia earthquake: 1.2 million need aid as some communities remain out of reach

Ten days after a powerful earthquake struck western Colombia, an estimated 1.2 million people need humanitarian assistance, while some communities have still received little or no aid, UN agencies said on Thursday.Humanitarian partners are seeking $135 million to respond to needs created by the 7.4-magnitude earthquake, which struck on 10 August, according to a new addendum to the UN’s 2026 Humanitarian Response Plan for Colombia.The response aims to reach 671,000 people, initially concentrating on the hardest-hit departments of Risaralda, Valle del Cauca, Chocó and Caldas.Speaking from Quibdó, the capital of Chocó and one of the areas worst affected, Jean-Philippe Antolin, a humanitarian response and recovery specialist with the UN migration agency (IOM), said the full extent of the disaster was still emerging.“There are communities that haven’t been accessed yet, or have only been accessed once,” he told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York.“Pretty much everything is still urgent.”Fearing collapseLatest government figures cited by UN agencies indicate that more than 300 people have been killed, 426 remain missing and more than 4,500 have been injured across 472 municipalities...