At least 11 people were killed and more than 100 were injured after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake jolted Pakistan and Afghanistan...
Digital Desk: At least 11 people were killed and more than 100 were injured after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake jolted Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, the news agency Associated Press reported. The epicenter was in Afghanistan, and the affected nations included Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, China, and Kyrgyzstan.
Strong tremors from the earthquake were also felt in Delhi-NCR and across much of northern India last night.
"An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit 133km SSE of Fayzabad, Afghanistan, today at 10:17 pm IST," said National Centre for Seismology. According to the US Geological Survey, the magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck 40 kilometers (25 miles) south-southeast of Jurm in Afghanistan's mountainous Hindukush area, which borders Pakistan and Tajikistan.
At least two people were killed in Laghman province, according to Afghanistan's disaster mitigation agency. In neighboring Pakistan, at least nine people were killed, including a 13-year-old girl who died when a wall collapsed at her house, and at least 100 others were injured.
Taimoor Khan, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority in the northwest, said at least 19 mudbrick homes collapsed in remote areas. "We are still collecting data about the damages," he said.
More than 100 people were brought to hospitals in the Swat valley area of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in a state of shock, Bilal Faizi, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s emergency services, told the Associated Press.
"These terrified people collapsed, and some of them collapsed as a result of the earthquake's shock," he said.
Faizi and other officials claimed that nine people were killed when roofs collapsed in various parts of north-western Pakistan during the earthquake late on Tuesday.
Pakistan's Prime Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, said he has directed disaster management officials to remain alert in the case of an emergency.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, tweeted that the ministry of public health had ordered all health centers to be on standby.
The area is prone to severe seismic upheavals. In 2005, a magnitude of 7.6 earthquake killed thousands of people in Pakistan and Kashmir.
Last year in southeastern Afghanistan, a 6.1 magnitude quake struck a rugged, mountainous region, flattening stone and mud-brick homes. Afghanistan's Taliban rulers put the overall death toll from the earthquake at 1,150, with hundreds more injured, while the United Nations put it at 770.
