A powerful earthquake hit a remote border area in southeast Afghanistan, killing at least 920 people.
A powerful earthquake struck a remote border area in southeastern Afghanistan overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. The death toll now stands at at least 920, the government said.
“So far, according to the information we have, at least 920 people have been killed and 600 injured,” Deputy Minister of Natural Disasters Sharafuddin Muslim said at a press conference.
“Many houses have been damaged and people are trapped inside,” deputy government spokesman Bilal Karimi told AFP.
“We call on aid agencies to provide immediate relief to earthquake victims to avert a humanitarian catastrophe,” he previously tweeted.
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.9, occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, very close to the border with Pakistan, according to the American Seismological Institute (USGS).
A second quake of magnitude 4.5 hit almost the same place at the same time, according to the USGS.
According to Yaqub Manzor, a tribal leader from Paktika, many of the injured came from Giyan district in the province and were taken to hospital by ambulances and also helicopters.
“Local markets are closed and people have rushed (to help) to the affected areas,” he told AFP by phone.
Photos posted on social networks show collapsed houses in the streets of a village, in this poor and difficult to access rural region.
Videos also show residents of the affected areas loading injured people into a helicopter.
EU and UN ready to help
Limited in number and capacity for a long time, the emergency services in Afghanistan are unsuited to dealing alone with a major natural disaster.
The earthquake was felt in several provinces of the region, and also in the capital Kabul, located about 200 kilometers north of the epicenter of the earthquake.
It was also in neighboring Pakistan, but no damage or casualties were immediately reported there.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was “deeply saddened” by this tragedy and indicated that the Pakistani authorities were working to provide support to their Afghan counterpart.
“The European Union is monitoring the situation (…), and stands ready to coordinate and provide emergency aid,” also tweeted its special envoy to Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson. The UN has also said it is studying aid needs.
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range which lies at the junction between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
These disasters can be particularly devastating due to the weak resilience of rural Afghan homes.
In October 2015, a powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.5 hit the Hindu Kush range, straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing more than 380 people in these two countries.
Among the Afghan victims were 12 young girls, trampled in a panic as they tried to get out of their tottering school.
Since coming to power in Kabul last August, Afghanistan has been plunged into a serious financial and humanitarian crisis, caused by the freezing of billions of assets held abroad and the sudden halt in international aid which carried the country at arm’s length for 20 years, and which is now coming back in dribs and drabs.