Afghanistan earthquake: Over 200 useless, at least 500 injured; rescuers race to find survivors

At least 250 individuals had been killed and greater than 500 injured after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck Afghanistan’s distant northeastern Kunar province late Sunday night time, officers stated, as reported by The New York Times. Tremors had been felt throughout jap Afghanistan and elements of Pakistan.Sediqullah Quraishi Badloon, a communications official for Nangarhar province, stated a lot of the casualties had been reported in Kunar, whereas 9 deaths occurred in Nangarhar. The quake struck about 27 km east-northeast of Jalalabad, a metropolis of almost 200,000 individuals, at 11:47 pm native time (1917 GMT), in accordance to the US Geological Survey. It was adopted by at least three aftershocks.“The number of casualties and injuries is high, but since the area is difficult to access, our teams are still on site,” well being minister Sharafat Zaman stated. Kunar’s provincial info head, Najibullah Hanif, added that a whole bunch of injured had been taken to hospitals, with the toll anticipated to rise as reviews come from distant districts.The midnight quake struck at a shallow depth of round 8–10 km, toppling mud and stone houses alongside the mountainous border with Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area. Rescuers had been working throughout a number of districts, looking the rubble for survivors. Authorities confirmed that a number of youngsters died when their house’s roof collapsed.Buildings shook for a number of seconds in Jalalabad and different cities, whereas tremors had been additionally felt in Islamabad, almost 370 km away, AFP reported.Earthquakes are a recurring catastrophe in Afghanistan, the place a lot of the inhabitants lives in fragile housing close to geological faults. The nation’s place at the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, significantly within the Hindu Kush area, makes it extremely weak to seismic exercise. Each main quake additional strains reconstruction efforts in a nation already battered by many years of battle.