At least 8 killed, 200 injured as 6.3-magnitude quake strikes Afghanistan

Kabul: At least eight people were killed and nearly 200 others injured after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck northern Afghanistan early on Monday, Afghan government officials told local media.

Qari Lutfullah Habibi, head of the Public Health Department in Samangan province, said that in the provincial capital, Aybak, one person was killed and more than 100 were injured. In the Hazrat Sultan district of Samangan, one person was killed and 15 others were injured. In the neighbouring Balkh province, six deaths and over 70 injuries were reported in the Khulm district.

The Afghan government said rescue teams are still assessing damage in remote areas affected by the earthquake and warned that the casualty toll may rise as communications are restored. Medical and emergency teams have been dispatched to the affected regions, where local hospitals are struggling to cope with the increasing number of injured people, Xinhua news agency reported.

Due to mountainous terrain and weak infrastructure, Afghanistan frequently experiences deadly earthquakes that cause significant casualties. The country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis has also severely hindered its ability to respond effectively to disasters. Afghanistan lies along the collision zone between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, with additional influence from the Arabian plate to the south—making it one of the most seismically active regions in the world.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) issued an orange alert through its PAGER system—an automated tool that assesses the potential impact of earthquakes—warning that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread.”

The quake struck at a depth of 28 km (17.4 miles) near Mazar-e Sharif, a city of about 523,000 people, according to the USGS.

Videos showing rescue operations to free people trapped under rubble, along with images of collapsed buildings and scattered debris, circulated widely on the social media platform X.

Earlier on September 23, a 4.9-magnitude earthquake had struck southeastern Afghanistan, according to the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. The quake’s epicentre was pinpointed at a shallow depth of 10 km, with coordinates at 34.48 degrees north latitude and 70.71 degrees east longitude.

Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban government has faced several devastating earthquakes, including one in 2023 in the western Herat region near the Iranian border that killed over 1,500 people and destroyed more than 63,000 homes.

According to seismologist Brian Baptie of the British Geological Survey, northeastern Afghanistan has experienced 12 earthquakes above magnitude 7 since 1900. Studies further show that more than 355 quakes exceeding magnitude 5.0 have occurred across the country since 1990.

IANS