About 13 people are reportedly killed with more than 90 injured in Afghanistan and Pakistan after a magnitude of 6.5 earthquake struck late on Tuesday, government officials said.
At least nine people were killed and 44 injured in northwest Pakistan, a Pakistani government official said, adding that hospitals in northern Khyber and Pakhtunkhwa province were into a state of emergency over night.
Also, about four people were killed and 50 injured in Afghanistan, a health ministry officer said.
Houses and buildings in both countries were also damaged, according to authorities.
The quake was felt over an area more than 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) by some 285 million people in Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, the European-Mediterranean, Seismological Centre said.
The epicentre, according to reports, was in the Hindu Kush mountains, in the sparsely populated northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, 40 kilometres southeast of Jurm village, at the considerable depth of 187 kilometres, the U.S Geological survey said.
Senior Provincial Official, Abdul Basit, said in addition to the dead and the injured in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, at least 19 houses were damaged.
Shaffiulah Rahimi, a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s disaster mitigation ministry, said late Tuesday that two people had been killed in the eastern province of Laghman.
Significant parts of South Asia, reports claims, are seismically active because a techonic plate known as the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.
Prudence Journal recalls that a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed more than 1,000 people last year.
in 2005, about 73,000 people were killed by a 7.6 magnitude quake that reportedly struck northern Pakistan.