At least 120 people died and a thousand injured on Saturday October 7 in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, which caused landslides in western Afghanistan.
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“So far more than 1 000 injured women, children and elderly people were recorded, and around 120 people lost their lives“, Mosa Ashari, head of disaster management in Herat province, told AFP. The previous toll stood at 15 dead, but authorities had warned that it would rise further, with people still buried under rubble.
The epicenter of the earthquake was located 40 kilometers northwest of Herat – a city considered the cultural capital of Afghanistan – and it was quickly followed by four strong aftershocks with magnitudes of 5.5, 4, 7, 6.3 and 5.9 respectively, reported the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS).
Landslides in rural and mountainous areas
In Herat, which has a population of 1.9 million according to World Bank data, the city’s residents and traders fled buildings when the earthquake struck around 11 a.m. local time (06:30 UT). noted an AFP journalist, but for the moment no reports of victims or material damage had been reported.
“There is likely to be a significant number of casualties and the disaster to be potentially widespread », Indicates the USGS. “Previous events with the same alert level have required a response at the regional or national level. » «In rural and mountainous areas, landslides have occurred“, affirmed the spokesperson for the natural disaster management services, Mullah Jan Sayeq.
A country frequently plagued by earthquakes
In June 2022, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake, the deadliest in Afghanistan in nearly 25 years, caused more than a thousand dead and tens of thousands homeless, in the poor province of Paktika (south-east). And last March, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake killed 13 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, near the town of Jurm, in the northeast of the country.
Afghanistan frequently experiences earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, close to where the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates meet. The country is already in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis, since the return to power of the Taliban in 2021 and the subsequent withdrawal of international aid.
(WithAFP)