AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN: Afghanistan’s Bakhtar News Agency says an earthquake in the country’s east has killed over 1,000 people and injured 1,500 others.
That latest figure came from the Bakhtar News Agency as officials tried to help those affected by Wednesday’s temblor.
Rescue efforts are likely to be complicated since many international aid agencies left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country last year and the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. military from the longest war in its history.
A powerful earthquake struck a rural, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing at least 920 people and injuring hundreds more in the deadliest temblor in two decades, authorities said. Officials warned that the already grim toll would likely rise.
Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6.1 temblor near the Pakistani border, but quakes of that strength can cause severe damage in an area where homes and other buildings are poorly constructed and landslides are common.
Experts put the depth at just 10 kilometres (6 miles) another factor that could increase the impact. The disaster posed a major test for the Taliban-led government, which seized power last year as the U.S. planned to pull out from the country and end its longest war, two decades after toppling the same insurgents in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
- THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
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