Afghanistan: at least a thousand dead and 600 injured in a powerful earthquake


The death toll from the 5.9 magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Afghanistan overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday now stands at at least 1,000 dead and 600 injured, according to a spokesperson for the government, Mohammad Naeem. “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 km 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.

Frequent earthquakes

Photos posted on social media showed collapsed houses in the streets of a village. Videos also showed residents of the affected areas loading injured people into a helicopter. The earthquake was felt in several provinces of the region, and also in the capital Kabul, located about 200 km north of the epicenter of the earthquake.

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.



Source link -75