At least 622 people died and more than 1,500 others were injured in eastern Afghanistan during the night for an earthquake of magnitude 6, the spokesman of the Interior Ministry, said Abdul Mateen Qani on Monday.
The Epicenter of the earthquake, followed by at least five replicas, one of which is the 5.2 magnitude on the Richter scale, was only eight kilometers deep in the province of Nangarhar, according to the United States geological service.
The spokesman of the Ministry of Health in Kabul, Sharafat Zaman, warned that the results in the province of Kounar are “high” and that “the damage is very important.”
In these remote areas and accident geography, the Taliban authorities sent helicopters to try to accelerate rescue operations. The medical teams were sent from Jalalabad and Kabul.
Afghanistan is frequently beaten by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kouch mountain range, near the crossing of Euroasian and Indian tectonic plates.
A particularly violent earthquake
But what happened in the heart of the night, and followed by five replicas, one of which is 5.2 on the Richter scale, was particularly violent.
The AFP journalists felt the tremors in Kabul for several seconds, as well as in Islamabad in Pakistan, 370 km while the crow flies. The province of Nangarhar had already been beaten last week by sudden floods that had killed five people and caused damage, destroying agricultural land and residential areas.
In October 2023, an earthquake of magnitude 6.3, followed by eight replicas, according to the UN, had left more than 1,500 dead and destroyed more than 63,000 homes in the western province of Herat.
Some 300 schools or teaching centers had been destroyed in the most deadly earthquake to have hit this country, one of the poorest in the world, in more than 25 years.
Source: BFM TV
