Earthquake survivors work on the rubble of a mud house after it collapsed following the quake in Jalalabad province, yesterday.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan: An earthquake in Afghanistan’s east and flash floods in the north killed at least 33 people yesterday as hundreds of traditional mud-brick homes collapsed, officials said.
The 5.7 magnitude quake, which hit before 2pm (0930 GMT) was felt as far away as the Indian capital New Delhi and was the latest in a spate of tremors to shake Asia this month.
The quake was 65km deep with an epicentre 11 km from Mehtar Lam, capital of the eastern province of Laghman, according to the US Geological Survey.
“The number of dead is expected to rise as the search operation is still ongoing,” said Nangarhar Red Crescent chief Nagyalay Yusufzai.
He said more than 60 people were hurt in the quake, which sent people rushing from their homes and was felt in the Afghan capital Kabul and in Islamabad in neighbouring Pakistan.
Nangarhar government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai gave a different figure of nine confirmed dead in his province and said more than 100 were injured.
“There has been widespread damage in some affected villages since most of the houses there are mud-built,” he said.
One person was killed and one injured in Kunar and many homes were destroyed, said its spokesman Wasefullah Wasef.
In Kama district outside Jalalabad, people ran from their homes in panic when the tremor was felt, a witness said, describing it as “very powerful”.
At least 18 people were killed in adjacent Nangarhar and Kunar provinces and the death toll was expected to rise, a spokesman for the Afghan Red Crescent Society said. Some 70 people were injured in Nangarhar alone.
Hundreds of homes collapsed across Kunar and Nangarhar.
Yesterday saw steady rain across most of Afghanistan, which would have weakened the mud-brick dwellings many Afghans live in, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
The agency did not yet have its own casualty figures.
Rain also caused flash-flooding in the northern province of Balkh earlier yesterday, killing 15 people, provincial council member Fazel Hadidi said.
Buildings swayed in New Delhi and panicky people ran into the street in Kashmir, where an quake killed about 75,000 people in 2005, most on the Pakistan side. Wednesday’s quake was also felt in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range which lies near the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
In June 2012 two quakes in the area triggered landslides that killed at least 75 villagers.
Last week, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake killed nearly 200 people in southwest China, a few days after another powerful tremor killed 35 people in Pakistan near the border with Iran.
Agencies
