Taliban spokesperson: About 2,000 dead after earthquake in Afghanistan Israel reports shelling from Lebanon +++ Number of victims rises to 300 +++ 1,590 injured

According to government estimates, around 2,000 people have been killed after several powerful earthquakes in Afghanistan. A Taliban spokesman confirmed this to the German news agency on Sunday. The number of injured is extremely high, said Abdul Wahid Rajan of the Ministry of Information and Culture.

Meanwhile, the desperate search for survivors continues. The UN emergency agency OCHA expected the number of victims to rise, as many people were trapped under collapsed buildings. Afghanistan’s Civil Protection Agency had previously expressed concern about hundreds of possible deaths.

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. According to the WHO, a total of about 4,200 people were affected by the earthquake disaster and at least 600 houses were destroyed.

The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported on internet platform X (formerly Twitter) that at least 300 injured people were treated in the hospital in the provincial city of Herat in the first hours. Doctors Without Borders set up additional tents there immediately after the earthquake.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres was shocked and offered his condolences to the families of the victims, as UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York. Guterres called on the international community to support the Afghan people affected by the earthquake, especially in view of the coming winter.

Well-connected Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwari shared videos of the rescue efforts on the X platform. The photos showed houses that were completely in ruins. “The tranquil beauty of Herat was devastated by a brutal earthquake that left entire villages in ruins,” Sarwari wrote.

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.

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/dpa)