POWERFUL OVERNIGHT EARTHQUAKE KILLS 1,000 AFGHANISTANS

An earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing at least 1,000 people, authorities said.

Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6.1 quake that struck Paktika province, but it will likely complicate any relief efforts that the international community has largely left Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover of the country last year, and the chaotic withdrawal of the US military and NATO forces. 

Afghan emergency official Sharafuddin Muslim gave the death toll in a news conference Wednesday. 

Earlier, the director-general of the state-run Bakhtar news agency, Abdul Wahid Rayan, wrote on Twitter that 90 houses have been destroyed in Paktika and dozens of people are believed trapped under the rubble.

Footage from Paktika province near the Pakistan border showed victims being carried into helicopters to be airlifted from the area. Images widely circulating online from the province showed destroyed stone houses, with residents picking through clay bricks and other rubble.

Bakhtar posted footage of a resident receiving IV fluids from a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home and others sprawled on stretchers. He said Afghanistan Red Cross staff were deployed in the area to help.

Map showing Paktika province in Afghanistan where an earthquake hit on 22 June 2022 - Euronews

“A severe earthquake shook four districts of Paktika province, killing and injuring hundreds of our countrymen and destroying dozens of houses,” Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, separately wrote on Twitter. “We urge all aid agencies to send teams to the area immediately to prevent further catastrophe.”

In neighbouring Khost province, authorities believed there are also dozens injured and dead in the earthquake as well, Rayan said.

Neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department put the earthquake at a magnitude of 6.1. Tremors were felt in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in the eastern Punjab province. Some remote areas of Pakistan saw reports of damage to homes near the Afghan border, but it wasn't immediately clear if that was due to rain or the earthquake, said Taimoor Khan, a disaster management spokesperson in the area.

The European seismological agency, EMSC, said the earthquake’s tremors were felt over 500 kilometres by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Afghans evacuate wounded in an earthquake in the province of Paktika, eastern Afghanistan, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. - Bakhtar News Agency via AP

Mountainous Afghanistan and the larger region of South Asia along the Hindu Kush mountains, where the Indian tectonic plate collides with the Eurasian plate to the north, has long been vulnerable to devastating earthquakes. Poor construction for homes, hospitals and other buildings put them at risk of collapse in earthquakes, while landslides remain common across the mountains of Afghanistan.

In 2015, a major earthquake that struck the country’s northeast killed over 200 people in Afghanistan and neighbouring northern Pakistan. A similar 6.1 earthquake in 2002 killed about 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan. And in 1998, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan’s remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people.