Grieving villagers in eastern Afghanistan on Friday dug through mounds of earth that had once been their homes to recover the bodies of dozens of people feared killed by a 5.5 magnitude earthquake.

Crowds had gathered for the first funerals by midday, even as some families continued to search by hand through houses that had been reduced to jumbles of mud and cracked, broken wooden beams.

Survivors of a strong quake in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan say they spent a freezing night in the rain outside the collapsed remains of their homes because promised government help did not reach them.