PESHAWAR, Pakistan — At the very least 250 individuals have been killed and over 500 have been injured in Afghanistan after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit the nation, Taliban officers mentioned Monday.
The earthquake struck 17 miles from the town of Jalalabad close to the border with Pakistan round midnight native time (3:30 p.m. ET Sunday), in response to the U.S. Geological Survey.
As a result of the earthquake hit a distant mountainous space, “it is going to take time to get the precise details about human losses and injury to the infrastructure,” mentioned Sharafat Zaman, a spokesperson for the Afghan Public Well being Ministry.
“We’ve launched an enormous rescue operation and mobilized tons of of individuals to assist individuals within the affected areas,” Zaman mentioned.
Because the preliminary quake, a minimum of 5 aftershocks starting from 4.5 magnitude to five.2 magnitude have hit the realm all through Monday, in response to the USGS.
Aftershocks can final for days and may generally be worse than the primary quake.
Afghanistan is very weak to earthquakes because it sits on prime of a number of fault traces the place the Indian and Eurasian plates meet. The mountainous terrain of jap Afghanistan can also be liable to landslides, making it tougher for emergency providers to hold out rescues.
This quake was particularly devastating because it hit at a shallow depth of 5 miles, making it way more harmful even at average magnitude.
In 2022, round 1,000 individuals have been killed and hundreds extra have been injured when a 5.9-magnitude earthquake hit jap Afghanistan.
That, too, was a shallow quake.
The following yr, three 6.3-magnitude quakes hit the western Afghanistan province of Herat in a single week, killing round 1,500 individuals, in response to the U.N.
Monday’s quake comes at a difficult time for Afghanistan, one of many world’s poorest international locations, which is affected by 4 consecutive years of drought and the inflow of over 2.3 million Afghans who’ve returned from Iran and Pakistan this yr.
“Beneath-average first and second season crop manufacturing and lowered livestock revenue restrict their capability to inventory meals for the winter,” the Famine Early Warning Techniques Community, which was established by the USA Company for Worldwide Growth, mentioned in a report final week.
Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Peshawar and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.
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