Media Wire

Quake rocks Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, over a dozen killed

At least 13 people have been killed and hundreds injured after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake hit areas across Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the tremor felt as far as the Indian capital New Delhi.

In northwest Pakistan, at least nine people were killed and 44 injured, a government official said on Wednesday.

Hospitals in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were put into a state of emergency overnight.

In Afghanistan, at least four people were killed and 50 wounded, a health ministry official told the Reuters news agency.

The earthquake’s epicentre was 40km (25 miles) southeast of the Afghan town of Jurm, near the borders with Pakistan and Tajikistan, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said on Tuesday.

The quake was felt over an area more than 1,000km (621 miles) wide by some 285 million people in Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said.

Pakistan’s Meteorological Department put the magnitude slightly higher at 6.8 and later reported a 3.7 magnitude aftershock in the Hindu Kush region along the country’s border with Afghanistan.

Bilal Faizi, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Rescue 1122 service in the northwest of the country, and other officials told the Associated Press news agency that nine people were killed when roofs collapsed in various parts of northwestern Pakistan.

“A 10-year-old girl in Swat and a 24-year-old man in Lower Dir died when the walls of their [respective] houses collapsed,” Faizi told Al Jazeera.

According to Faizi, landslides have caused damage in the Swat district, 180km (112 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad.

“More than 20 buildings have suffered damages due to the jolts and scores of people have been injured,” he added.

Hospitals in the Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province treated at least 250 patients, 15 of whom suffered minor injuries and more than 200 were unconscious. Fifty-two people were injured in other parts of the province, officials said.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif asked the country’s disaster management officials to remain vigilant in the aftermath of the earthquake.

The tremor was felt in the Afghan capital, Kabul, as well as a number of Pakistani cities, including Islamabad and Lahore.

Witnesses also reported feeling the shaking in Indian-administered Kashmir. There, people rushed out of their homes in fear as they recalled two devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria last month, killing more than 50,000 people.

More than 1,000 people were killed last year after a magnitude 6.1 earthquake hit eastern Afghanistan. In 2005, at least 73,000 people were killed by a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck northern Pakistan.

IFP Media Wire

Reports and views published in the Media Wire section have been retrieved from other news agencies and websites, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Iran Front Page (IFP) news website. The IFP may change the headlines of the reports in a bid to make them compatible with its own style of covering Iran News, and does not make any changes to the content. The source and URL of all reports and news stories are mentioned at the bottom of each article.

Recent Posts

“Iran Hamdel” campaign sends aid to Gaza amid war

Aid items donated by millions of Iranians within a national campaign, have reached the beseiged…

10 hours ago

Iranian deputy FM: Cooperation with Saudis serves as a successful model for fostering peace and security

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht Ravanchi has said Iran and Saudi Arabia are committed…

10 hours ago

Official: Iran responds to IAEA resolution with increased nuclear enrichment capacity

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), says the organization…

12 hours ago

Pictures: Demonstrators in Tehran support people of Gaza, Lebanon

Hundreds of people gathered in Tehran on Friday morning in front of the United Nations…

12 hours ago

Int’l lawyer: US plans to sanction countries cooperating with ICC on Netanyahu arrest

An international law expert and analyst has revealed the U.S. plans to impose punitive measures…

15 hours ago

Minister of science: 25% of Iranian university professors emigrated due to economic challenges

Iran’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, Hossein Simayee Saraf, addressed on Thursday academic migration…

15 hours ago