A major earthquake killed at least 920 people and injured 600, according to information from the Taliban, a group that has ruled Afghanistan for nearly a year.
Footage and reports show that landslides destroyed homes in Paktika state, where rescuers are still searching for missing persons under the rubble. There is no official data on the total number of casualties.
Authorities used helicopters in remote areas of Afghanistan to transport the injured to nearby hospitals.
Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said hundreds of houses were destroyed in the earthquake and the death toll is expected to rise.
Sharafuddin Muslim, Deputy Minister for Disaster Management, told reporters that the earthquake occurred on Wednesday, 22/06 at 01:30 (local time), about 44 km from Khost city, shortly after.
Most of the victims were asleep when it happened.
The Taliban asked aid agencies to go to the affected areas in eastern Afghanistan.
A local doctor told the BBC that most of the deaths occurred in the Gayan and Barmal areas of Paktika. Local news site Etilaat-e Roz said an entire village in Gayan had been destroyed.
The shaking was felt more than 500 kilometers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Shaking was also felt in the country’s capital, Kabul, and in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
However, no casualties were reported in these major cities. According to BBC Urdu, the earthquake caused little damage in Pakistan.
Earthquakes in Afghanistan kill about 500 people a year
Afghanistan tends to have a lot of earthquakes as it is located in a region where tectonic plates are very active and there are several faults including the Chaman fault, Hari Rud fault, Badakhshan Central fault and Darvaz fault.
According to seismologists (earthquake experts), the earthquake that hit the country on Wednesday was 6.1 magnitude at a depth of about 51 km.
Earthquakes in Afghanistan often cause a lot of damage and death because many rural areas of the country are filled with precarious homes.
Image: Government of Afghanistan
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 7,000 people have died in earthquakes that have struck the country over the past decade.
Things were not looking good before the Taliban took over the country in August 2021. Afghanistan’s emergency services were overloaded to deal with natural disasters, and several planes and helicopters were available for first responders.
All of this was exacerbated by decades of armed conflict, which hampered attempts to expand protection against earthquakes and other natural disasters. Despite this, over the years many NGOs have taken action to strengthen the civil defense structure and the security of some of these precarious dwellings.
‘This text was originally published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-61896695.
source: Noticias
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