At least 250 killed in 6.0-magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan

Peshawar, Pakistan – at least 250 people were killed and more than 500 were injured in Afghanistan after a 6.0 -size earthquake hit the country, Taliban officials announced on Monday.

The earthquake struck 17 km from the city of Jalalabad near the border with Pakistan around midnight, local time (3.30 p.m. on Sunday), according to US Geological Survey.

Because the earthquake has struck a remote mountainous area, “it will take time to obtain exact information on human losses and infrastructure damage,” said Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Public Health.

“We have launched a massive and mobilized rescue operation hundreds of people to help people in the affected areas,” said Zaman.

Since the initial earthquake, at least five aftershocks ranging from 4.5 magnitude to 5.2 have hit the area throughout Monday, according to the USGS.

Replicas can last days and can sometimes be worse than the first earthquake.

Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because it is above several lines of fault where the Indian and Eurasian plates meet. The mountainous land in eastern Afghanistan is also subject to landslides, which makes it more difficult for emergency services to perform rescues.

This earthquake was particularly devastating because it touched a shallow depth of 5 miles, which makes it much more destructive even even on a moderate magnitude.

In 2022, around 1,000 people were killed and thousands of others were injured when a magnification earthquake of 5.9 hit eastern Afghanistan.

It was also a shallow earthquake.

The following year, three rude 6.3 earthquakes hit the province of herat in western Afghanistan in a week, killing around 1,500 people, according to the UN

Monday’s earthquake arrives at a difficult period for Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, which suffers from four consecutive years of drought and the influx of more than 2.3 million Afghans who returned from Iran and Pakistan this year.

“Agricultural production below the first and second season and reducing livestock income limit their ability to store food for winter,” said the postponement of warning warning systems last week, created by the American agency for international development.

Mushtaq Yusufzai reported Peshawar and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.