At least 12 killed as earthquake jolts Afghanistan, Pakistan

Kabul/Islamabad, Mar 22 (EFE).- At least 12 people were killed and more than 200 wounded across Afghanistan and Pakistan after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake rocked South And Central Asia, officials said on Wednesday.

The earthquake was registered at 10.17 pm local time on Tuesday, with its epicenter situated around 40 kilometers away from the city of Jurm in Afghanistan’s Badakshan province and close to the massive Hindu Kush mountains, according to the United States Geological Service.

In Afghanistan, “three deceased and 44 wounded have been reported by the health centers” across the country after the earthquake, Afghan health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman Amar told reporters.

He added that the deaths took place in the provinces of Laghman (east) and Takhar (north) and include a minor, while people were injured by the tremor in several parts of the country.

The earthquake – whose epicenter lies close to the borders of Pakistan and Tajikistan – caused significant damage in Pakistan, where at least 9 people were killed in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a provincial disaster management spokesperson told local broadcaster Geo TV.

The channel reported that the disaster had wounded around 160 people across the country.

Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region is a hub of powerful seismic activity and is often the originating point of tremors in the region.

In June 2022 a similar 5.9-magnitude earthquake in the eastern Paktika and Khost provinces, bordering Pakistan, killed more than 1,000 people and wounded over 1,500, apart from destroying hundreds of houses.

The country witnessed some of its deadliest seismic events in 1998, when in February two earthquakes measuring 5.9 and 6 killed more than 4,000 people in northern Afghanistan, and soon after in May a 7-magnitude quake again struck the same area and caused around 5,000 deaths. EFE

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