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Hundreds are feared dead and injured in a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck Afghanistan’s rugged north-eastern province of Kunar, authorities said, as rescuers combed the rubble of homes in a hunt for survivors.
Early reports showed 30 dead in a single village, the health ministry said, but added that accurate casualty figures had yet to be gathered in an area of scattered hamlets with a long history of earthquakes and flooding.
“The number of casualties and injuries is high, but since the area is difficult to access, our teams are still on site,” health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman said in a statement.
Hundreds of people were taken to hospital, said Najibullah Hanif, the provincial information head, with figures likely to rise as reports arrived from remote areas with few roads.
Rescue teams were active in various districts of the mountainous region after the midnight earthquake, which originated 10km below the surface, officials reported. The quake impacted homes constructed from mud and stone near the border of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area.
The earthquake hit not far from Jalalabad. Credit: SBS News
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
A series of earthquakes in its west killed more than 1,000 people last year, underscoring the vulnerability of one of the world’s poorest countries to natural disasters.
This is a developing story and this article will be updated.
