A photo provided by state news agency Bakhtar of the destruction caused by an earthquake in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday. Credit … Bakhtar News Agency, via Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – At least 1,000 people killed and more than 1,500 injured after a magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook a remote mountainous region in southeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border on Wednesday in the first hour, the state news agency Bakhtar said.
The quake occurred about 28 kilometers southwest of the city of Khost, a provincial capital in the southeast of the country, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and was about six miles deep. Raees Hozaifa, director of information and culture in the eastern province of Paktika, said the quake was felt in several provinces.
Some of the areas affected by the quake are in a remote and rugged country near the Pakistani border that was the scene of heavy fighting before and after the Taliban took possession of Afghanistan, and telecommunications are poor or non-existent. which makes it difficult to have a full account of casualties. An aid official said he expected the death toll to be much higher.
Mohammad Almas, head of aid and appeals for Qamar, a charity in Afghanistan active in the area, said he expected the death toll to be high as the area is far from hospitals and because of the quake. it occurred at night, when most people were. sleeping inside.
As many as 17 members of the same family were killed in a village when their house collapsed, he said; only one child survived. He said more than 25 villages were almost completely destroyed, including schools, mosques and houses.
In the Sperah district in Khost province, in the northeast of Paktika province, the quake killed at least 40 people and injured 90 others, said Shabir Ahmad Osmani, provincial director of information and culture. Khost.
Rafiullah Rahel, head of the health department in Paktika province, said 381 people had been killed and 205 injured in the province.
An image provided by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the location of the quake, which centered about 28 miles southwest of Khost in Paktika Province.
It was not immediately clear whether the figures provided by provincial officials were early estimates, or whether a large number of casualties had been recorded elsewhere.
Bakhtar news agency posted a video on Twitter of a landing helicopter in what it said was an area affected by the quake. He said ambulances were transporting the injured to hospitals.
Sarhadi Khosti, 26, who lives in Sperah District, said the quake had woken him up after 1 a.m. and that several houses, especially those made of earth or wood, had been completely destroyed. He said helicopters had transported some of the injured to hospitals in Kabul and neighboring provinces.
“At the moment, we are still busy removing dead or wounded from under the rubble,” he said.
Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN Special Representative for Afghanistan, wrote on Twitter that the organization was assessing the situation after the earthquake. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on Twitter that the agency “will continue to support people in need across the country.”
The quake occurred about 300 miles north-northeast of the site of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Pakistan in 2008, the USGS said. More than 200 people were reported dead at the time.
The quake affected Kabul, the Afghan capital, and northern Pakistan, according to a map posted on its website by the European Seismological Center for the Mediterranean. The USGS said a second magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck about 30 miles southwest of Khost about an hour later.
Safiullah Padshah reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Mike Ives of Seoul. Isabella Kwai and Emma Bubola contributed with the reports from London, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan.
– Safiullah Padshah and Mike Ives