NAHRIN, Afghanistan ? A strong aftershock sent boulders tumbling across mountain roads on Wednesday, blocking efforts to rush relief supplies to tens of thousands of homeless Afghans after a devastating earthquake. Officials said the death toll was in the hundreds, not the thousands originally feared.

The 6.1-magnitude quake struck nearly 80 villages Monday in a mountainous region nine miles in radius, leaving 100,000 people homeless or cut off from food supplies. There were 600 confirmed deaths Wednesday, and the United Nations said the toll was expected to reach 800 to 1,200.

An Afghan man looks over the devastation of his neighborhood after an earthquake in Nahrin, Afghanistan. The presence of international troops and aid workers in the country helped speed supplies Wednesday to the stricken area.

By Afghan standards, aid reached the quake-stricken Hindu Kush region with remarkable speed assisted by U.S. forces in Afghanistan to battle Taliban and al-Qaida forces and international peacekeepers whose first job is maintaining security in the capital, Kabul.

Despite rough, poorly maintained roads and frequent truck breakdowns, 2,000 tents, 10,000 blankets and 1,000 tons of food reached Nahrin, 105 miles north of Kabul, a little more than a day after Monday’s quake, U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said. Clothing, mattresses, cooking sets, medical supplies and surgical units also were on the way to Nahrin, some 40 miles from the quake’s epicenter.

That’s compared with the week it took aid workers to reach villagers after a quake in northern Afghanistan four years ago killed 5,000 people.

Relief efforts to some regions were being hampered by minefields left over from 20 years of conflict, their threat multiplied by concerns that the mines had been shifted by the quake.

While considerable aid had reached Nahrin, residents of the heavily damaged old part of the city complained Wednesday that no aid workers had yet visited or brought tents and food, although the needy are staying just a 20 minute drive from the aid collection point.

They had little patience for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, who walked through the ruins of their village earlier in the day and declared today a national day of mourning.

“All the people of Afghanistan share your pain,” he told a crowd of several hundred survivors and aid workers. But when he said that the people of Nahrin were “very, very brave. They haven’t asked for much,” he was interrupted by villagers shouting they had no water or electricity, and were in dire need of help.