A new earthquake, measuring 6.3, struck the city of Herat, in northwest Afghanistan, on Sunday, the American Geophysics Institute (USGS) said, after several tremors, including a devastating earthquake in this region since the beginning of the month.
The earthquake occurred at 8:06 a.m. local time (3:36 a.m. GMT) with an epicenter 33 kilometers from the city of Herat, in the province of the same name where a thousand people were killed in an earthquake in early October .
On October 7, entire villages were destroyed in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, causing more than a thousand deaths, 90% of them women and children, according to Unicef.
Another major earthquake on October 11, whose epicenter was detected around 30 kilometers north of Herat, created panic in a traumatized population and left at least one dead and around a hundred injured.
Afghanistan is already suffering from a serious humanitarian crisis, with the widespread withdrawal of foreign aid since the Taliban’s return to power.
Providing shelter in large quantities, as winter approaches, will be a challenge for the Taliban authorities, who took power in August 2021 and have tense relations with international aid organizations.
Afghanistan frequently experiences earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the junction between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
In June 2022, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake left more than a thousand dead and tens of thousands homeless in the poor province of Paktika in the southeast of the country.