Hundreds feared dead: Several strong earthquakes shake Afghanistan

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The Afghan Civil Protection Agency fears hundreds of deaths after major earthquakes. Seven villages in the hard-hit border province of Herat were completely destroyed, a spokesman for the national disaster response told the German news agency on Saturday. “Some villages had a thousand or more people living in them. There were 300 houses. Only 100 people survived,” the spokesperson said. However, only 15 deaths have been officially confirmed so far. Many residents are probably buried under the rubble.

Military and rescue organizations have been ordered to rush to the earthquake-hit area to help, according to the spokesman for the Taliban ruling Afghanistan, Sabiullah Mujahid. Hospitals were therefore preparing for countless injured people.

Videos on social media showed destroyed villages with piles of rubble, believed to include scores of victims. In the provincial capital Herat, crowds of people poured into the streets amid fears that buildings would collapse, residents reported.

Eight earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 6.3

On Saturday morning, at least eight earthquakes shook the border area near Iran in a short period of time. The American earthquake monitoring station USGS estimated the magnitude at values ​​between 4.6 and 6.3. The tremors occurred in the morning northwest of the Afghan border city of Herat, at a shallow depth of about ten kilometers.

The earthquakes were also felt in neighboring Iran. Residents of Iran’s Mashhad metropolis, some 300 kilometers from the quake zone, said the walls of houses were shaking. According to Iranian state media, teams were sent to border areas to inspect possible damage. There were dozens of aftershocks.

A resident of Afghanistan’s Herat province reported the strong earthquakes: “We fled the buildings,” the man said. “Everyone is open and no one knows what happened to their homes.” More than two million people live in the Afghan border province.

Serious earthquakes occur again and again in the region where the Arabian, Indian and Eurasian plates meet. A devastating earthquake in Afghanistan in 2022 killed more than a thousand people. After decades of conflict, many houses are poorly built. Earthquakes often cause major damage. (SDA)

Source: Blick