At least 300 people were killed and 500 injured in a powerful earthquake of magnitude 5.9 which hit southeastern Afghanistan, on the border with Pakistan overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, Afghan authorities said. The earthquake occurred at a depth of 10 km around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to the American Seismological Institute (USGS). A second quake of magnitude 4.5 hit almost the same place at the same time, according to the USGS.
In the provinces of Paktika and Khost, poor rural areas that are difficult to access, “many houses have been damaged and people are trapped inside”, deputy government spokesman Bilal Karimi told AFP. “We call on aid agencies to provide immediate assistance to the victims of the earthquake in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe,” he previously tweeted. According to Yaqub Manzor, a tribal leader from Paktika, many injured people from Giyan district were taken to hospital by ambulances and helicopters. “Local markets are closed and people have rushed (to help) to affected areas,” he told AFP by telephone.
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Frequent earthquakes
The earthquake was felt as far as the capital Kabul, located about 200 km north of the epicenter of the earthquake. It was also in neighboring Pakistan, but no damage or casualties were immediately reported there. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said “deeply grieved” by this tragedy and indicated that the Pakistani authorities were working to provide support to their Afghan counterparts. Long limited in number and capacity, the emergency services in Afghanistan are ill-suited to deal with a major natural disaster on their own.
“The European Union is monitoring the situation (…), and stands ready to coordinate and provide emergency aid”, also tweeted his special envoy to Afghanistan, Tomas Niklasson. The UN has also said it is studying aid needs.
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range which lies at the junction between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
These disasters can be particularly devastating due to the weak resilience of rural Afghan homes. In October 2015, a powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.5 hit the Hindu Kush range, straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing more than 380 people in these two countries. Among the Afghan victims were 12 young girls, trampled in a panic as they tried to get out of their tottering school.
Since coming to power in Kabul last August, Afghanistan is plunged into a serious financial crisis and humanitarian, caused by the freezing of billions of assets held abroad and the sudden halt in international aid which had carried the country at arm’s length for 20 years, and which is now coming back in dribs and drabs.