A magnitude 6 earthquake struck Afghanistan’s rugged northeastern Kunar province at midnight, leaving hundreds feared dead and injured, officials said Monday. Rescue teams rushed to comb through collapsed homes in remote villages as the search for survivors continued, according to Reuters report.
The Ministry of Public Health reported at least 30 deaths in a single village but cautioned that casualty figures remain incomplete due to the region’s difficult terrain. “The number of casualties and injuries is high, but since the area is difficult to access, our teams are still on site,” ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman said.
Hundreds of injured have already been taken to hospitals, according to provincial information director Najibullah Hanif, who warned that the toll is expected to rise as reports arrive from isolated hamlets. The quake, striking at a shallow depth of 10 km (6 miles), leveled mud and stone houses across several districts along the border with Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.
Afghanistan, lying along the Hindu Kush fault line where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide, is highly prone to devastating quakes. Last year, a series of tremors in the country’s west killed more than 1,000 people, underscoring the extreme vulnerability of one of the world’s poorest nations to natural disasters.
