DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
Toll likely to rise, with significant damage reported across mountainous provinces of Kunar and Nangahar, sources say.
A magnitude 6.0 earthquake has struck eastern Afghanistan, with at least 10 people killed and the toll expected to grow as information trickles in from remote mountain villages.
The tremor shook the Kunar and Nangahar provinces at about midnight local time on Monday (19:30 GMT, Sunday), local sources told Al Jazeera, with significant damage reported across several districts in the mountainous regions.
The sources said at least 20 others were confirmed injured.
The Anadolu news agency meanwhile cited Afghanistan’s Information Ministry as saying that more than 250 people were killed and 500 injured in the quake.
The casualties were reported in Nur Gal, Sawki, Watpur, Manogi and Chapa Dara districts of Kunar province, it said.
The United States Geological Survey said the 6.0 magnitude quake was centred 27km (17 miles) east of the city of Jalalabad in the Nangahar province. It happened at a depth of just 8km (5 miles).
A short while later, another 4.5 magnitude tremor occurred near Basawul in Nangahar.
Al Jazeera’s Mohsin Momand, reporting from Kabul, said aftershocks were felt into the morning.
“The epicentre of the quake was recorded in Kunar province. Entire villages in Kunar province have been badly hit. And the government says emergency teams are being deployed from Kabul and nearby provinces. Officials here are pledging to use all available resources to rescue people and support affected families,” he said.
The effect of the quake was felt in neighbouring Pakistan, too.
Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from the Lahore, said people in vast areas of Pakistan, including in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces, were jolted awake late at night because of the tremor.
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He said the devastation from the earthquake was likely to be high in Afghanistan as it had struck at a shallow depth.
“Kunar is an impoverished and mountainous region. The houses there are very vulnerable, built of mud and rocks. So they would not be able to withstand this particular earthquake, given the fact that this was shallow. It also happened late in the night, when a lot of people were inside their homes,” Hyder said.
“The situation there is quite dire, because some of the reports that we are getting are that hundreds are feared dead, and that is, of course, the big concern. These villages are spread wide apart. Access is also very difficult, because such earthquakes would definitely have caused landslides. So whatever operation is going to be underway has to be within the critical hours to reach those remote locations. That will be the biggest challenge,” he added.
Experts, meanwhile, say the affected area is in a region prone to large earthquakes.
“It’s a very tectonically active area at the junction of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, and the Indian plate is moving northwards and sliding past parts of Eurasia,” said Chris Elders, an emeritus professor at Curtin University’s School of Earth at Planetary Sciences in Western Australia.
It is an area that “also has quite a high population density and an area that’s very mountainous”, meaning that earthquakes there often also trigger landslides, he said.
“It’s not only the buildings that will shake and become unstable, but the hillsides will also shake and become unstable, and that is what triggers the landslide,” he added.
In October 2023, an earthquake struck western Afghanistan, killing at least 2,400 people, according to the government there.
