Disasters & Accidents

Afghan authorities fear hundreds dead after seven earthquakes

Kabul, Oct. 7 (EFE) – Afghan authorities fear hundreds dead and more than 300 injured as search operations continue after seven earthquakes measuring up to 6.3 struck Zinda Khan district in Afghanistan’s Herat province on Saturday, however, there has been no official toll yet.

“There is no town that does not have hundreds of dead and the number of victims could increase”, the press director of the Ministry of Disaster Management, Mula Janan Sayeq, told EFE.

The authorities’ estimate is based on the number of people who lived in the affected villages, now reduced to rubble, inhabited by about a thousand people.

“People are under the collapsed houses, and maybe that is the number of deceased, different rescue teams are working there,” Sayeq said.

The NGO Doctors Without Borders said it was supporting medical care at Herat’s regional hospital, “where more than 300 injured people have arrived,” according to a report on Twitter.

The organization added that it had set up 5 medical tents to accommodate up to 80 patients, while also supporting the emergency room with staff and medical supplies.

Afghanistan experienced at least seven earthquakes on Saturday. The first and largest occurred at 12:11 pm (+5:30 GMT) at a depth of 14 kilometers and 33 kilometers from the town of Zindah Jan in Herat province, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Four consecutive aftershocks of magnitude 5.5, 4.7, 6.3, and 5.9 followed within an hour.

The fourth earthquake, also of magnitude 6.3, was recorded at a depth of about ten kilometers and at a distance of about 29 kilometers from Zindah Jan.

The USGS recorded two more shocks nearly an hour later in Herat province, 4.8 and 4.9, respectively.

Afghanistan is one of the most vulnerable countries to natural disasters because it is located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, a point of great seismic activity and a common point of origin for telluric movements in the region.

However, Afghanistan has a very vulnerable, mostly poor population, in addition to lacking sufficient infrastructure to deal with disasters such as floods or earthquakes.

In late June 2022, a similar 5.9-magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika and Khost provinces, bordering Pakistan, killed more than a thousand people and injured about 1,500, in addition to destroying hundreds of homes.

Afghanistan also suffered one of its worst earthquake disasters in 1998 in the north of the country, when two earthquakes measuring 5.9 and 6 struck in February, killing some 4,000 people.

A few months later, at the end of May, another earthquake with a magnitude of 7 struck the area again, killing about 5,000 people. EFE

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