Hundreds were feared dead and injured in an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 that struck Afghanistan’s rugged north-eastern province of Kunar, authorities said on Monday, as rescuers combed the rubble of homes in a hunt for survivors.
The quake at around midnight local time was centred 27 kilometres east-northeast of the city of Jalalabad, a city of about 200,000 people, the US Geological Survey said. It was just 8 kilometres deep. Shallower quakes tend to cause more damage.
Early reports showed 30 dead in a single village, the health ministry said, but added that accurate casualty figures had yet to be gathered in an area of scattered hamlets with a long history of earthquakes and flooding.
“The number of casualties and injuries is high, but since the area is difficult to access, our teams are still on site,” health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman said in a statement.
Hundreds of injured were taken to hospital, said Najibullah Hanif, the provincial information head, with figures likely to rise as reports arrived from remote areas with few roads.
A Taliban government spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, posted on X that the earthquake had “caused loss of life and property damage in some of our eastern provinces”. The US Geological Survey said its models predicted “significant casualties” and potential widespread damage.
A 4.5 magnitude quake occurred some 20 minutes later in the same province.
Rescuers were working in several districts of the mountainous province where the quake levelled homes of mud and stone on the border with Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, officials said.
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