Disasters & Accidents

Afghanistan earthquake death toll rises to 400, hundreds more injured

Kabul, Oct 8 (EFE).- The death toll from the magnitude-6.3 earthquake and aftershocks in western Afghanistan rose to 400 on Sunday as rescue efforts continued among the rubble.

“More than 400 people have lost lives in the earthquake and hundreds more have been injured,” Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) spokesperson Irfanullah Sharafzoy told EFE.

The earthquake also left more than 600 injured, according to the figure earlier provided by Ministry of Disaster Management spokesperson Mula Jan Sayeq.

Sharafzoy added that the figures could increase as 12 villages in the Zinda Khan district of Herat province have been “completely destroyed” and ARCS personnel are still searching the area and in the debris. Residents are being evacuated to safer areas.

An estimated 4,200 people, including 600 families, have been affected and 600 houses damaged or destroyed by the earthquake, with the village of Mahal Wadakah the worst affected, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The document put the number of people who have been displaced to the city of Herat, the provincial capital, at 2,100, according to OCHA.

Afghanistan experienced at least seven tremors on Saturday. The first and largest occurred at 12.11 pm (+5:30 GMT) at a depth of 14 kilometers and 33 kilometers from Zindah Jan, according to the USGS.

Four aftershocks of M5.5, M4.7, M6.3 and M5.9 followed in a period of one hour.

The US seismology service recorded two more tremors almost an hour later in the province of Herat of magnitudes 4.8 and 4.9, respectively.

The South Asian country is among those most prone to natural disasters, being located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, a point of great seismic activity.

Furthermore, Afghanistan has a vulnerable population, in addition to lacking sufficient infrastructure to deal with natural disasters.

At the end of June last year, an earthquake of M5.9 in the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktika and Khost, bordering Pakistan, caused the deaths of more than 1,000 people and injured some 1,500, as well as the destruction of hundreds of homes.

Afghanistan also suffered one of the largest disasters caused by earthquakes in 1998 in the north of the country, when two earthquakes of M5.9 and M6 caused the deaths of some 4,000 people. A few months later, an M7 earthquake hit the area again and caused around 5,000 deaths. EFE

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