Afghans look at the devastation caused by the earthquake in Paktika Province, eastern Afghanistan, Wednesday, June 22, 2022.
Highlight
- Taliban government deputy spokesman confirms earthquake in Afghanistan
- Pakistani media reported the magnitude of the earthquake as 6.1. told
- Pak media said that the epicenter of the quake was 44 km southwest of Khost in Afghanistan at a depth of 50.8 km
Afghanistan Earthquake: A powerful earthquake struck a rural, mountainous area in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border early Wednesday, killing 1,000 people and injuring more than 1,500, officials said. Officials warned that the death toll could rise.
Information is scarce about a magnitude 6.1 earthquake that damaged buildings in Khost and Paktika provinces. Rescue efforts are likely to be complicated since several international aid agencies left Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country last year and the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from the longest war in its history.
Neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department said the epicenter was in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, near the border and about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the city of Khost. Such tremors can cause serious damage, especially in an area where houses and other buildings are poorly constructed and landslides are common.
Footage from Paktika province showed people being taken in helicopters to airlift them from the area. Others were treated on the ground. One resident could be seen receiving IV fluids while sitting on a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home with still more necks stretched out. Other images show residents picking up mud bricks and other debris from destroyed stone houses.
Afghan emergency officer Sharafuddin Muslim gave the death toll at a press conference on Wednesday. Earlier, Abdul Wahid Ryan, director general of the state-run Bakhtar news agency, wrote on Twitter that 90 houses were destroyed in Paktika and dozens were buried under the rubble.
Taliban government deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi gave no specifics about the death toll, but wrote on Twitter that hundreds of people were killed and injured in the earthquake that struck four districts of Paktika.
“We urge all aid agencies to immediately dispatch teams to prevent further devastation,” he wrote.
At least 25 people were killed and more than 95 injured in the quake in just one district in neighboring Khost province, local officials said.
Prime Minister’s emergency meeting in Kabul
In Kabul, Prime Minister Mohamed Hassan Akhund called an emergency meeting at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to coordinate relief efforts for victims in Paktika and Khost.
“The response is ongoing,” Ramiz Alkabarov, the UN’s Resident Coordinator in Afghanistan, wrote on Twitter.
Taimur Khan, a disaster management spokesman for the region, said there were reports of damage to homes near the Afghan border in some remote areas of Pakistan, but it was not immediately clear whether it was caused by rain or an earthquake.
Shahbaz Sharif offered condolences
In a statement, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif expressed his condolences over the earthquake, saying that his country would provide aid to the Afghan people.
The European Seismological Agency, EMSC, said the tremors were felt more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) by 119 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Large areas of South Asia, along with mountainous Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush mountains, have long been vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.
In 2015, a major earthquake that struck the country’s northeast killed more than 200 people in Afghanistan and neighboring northern Pakistan. In 2002, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake killed nearly 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan. And in 1998, another earthquake of the same strength and subsequent aftershocks in the far northeast of Afghanistan killed at least 4,500 people.
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