Earthquake of magnitude 6 hits Afghanistan, around 500 feared dead
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.
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.
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.
Around 500 people have been killed and 1000 more injured in an earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan on Monday, the country's state-run broadcaster Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) reported. Taliban-led health authorities in Kabul, however, said they were still confirming the official toll figure as they worked to reach remote areas.
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 people were taken to the hospital, said Najibullah Hanif, the provincial information head, with figures likely to rise as reports arrived from remote areas with few roads.
Rescuers were working in several districts of the mountainous province where the midnight quake hit at a depth of 10 km (6 miles), to level homes of mud and stone on the border with Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, officials said.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
A series of earthquakes in its west killed more than 1,000 people last year, underscoring the vulnerability of one of the world’s poorest countries to natural disasters.