Earthquake kills At least 13 in Afghanistan

At least 13 people were killed and more than 90 injured in Pakistan and Afghanistan after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck late on Tuesday.

Government officials say at least nine people were killed and 44 injured in northwest Pakistan.

At least four people were also killed and 50 injured in Afghanistan, a health ministry official there said.

Authorities say houses and buildings were also damaged in both countries.

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake was felt over an area more than 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) wide by some 285 million people in Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake’s epicentre was in the Hindu Kush mountains, in the sparsely populated northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, 40km southeast of Jurm village, at the considerable depth of 187km.

Also Read: Strong Earthquake Strikes Northeast Afghanistan

In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province senior provincial official Abdul Basit said in addition to the dead and injured, at least 19 houses were damaged.

Shafiullah Rahimi, a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s disaster mitigation ministry, said late on Tuesday that two people had been killed in the eastern province of Laghman.

Large parts of South Asia are seismically active because a tectonic plate known as the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.

A 6.1 magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed more than 1,000 people last year.

In 2005, at least 73,000 people were killed by a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck northern Pakistan.

Zainab Sa’id