At least 250 killed in overnight Afghanistan earthquake: official

An official said at least 250 people were injured and checks were being conducted to see if the casualty toll might rise.

The quake struck about 44km (27 miles) from the city of Khost, near the Pakistani border, at a depth of 51km, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

“Strong and long jolts,” a resident of the Afghan capital, Kabul, posted on a the website of the European Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC).

Shaking was felt by about 119 million people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, the EMSC said on Twitter.

Photographs posted on social media showed several heavily damaged mud houses in remote rural areas.

The head of the Taliban administration’s natural disaster ministry, Mohammad Nassim Haqqani, said the majority of deaths were in the province of Paktika, where 100 people were killed and 250 injured.

Another 25 people were killed in Khost and five in Nangarhar province, he said, adding that investigations were being conducted to determine if there were more casualties.

“We call on aid agencies to provide immediate relief to the victims of the earthquake to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe,” government spokesman Bilal Karimi tweeted after a 5.9-magnitude quake hit several areas bordering Pakistan during the night.

Mr Mohammad Amin Huzaifa, head of the Information and Culture Department in Paktika, one of the provinces hit by the tremor, told AFP the toll is expected to rise.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties in Pakistan.

The disaster comes as Afghanistan has been enduring a severe economic crisis since the Taliban took over August, as US-led international forces were withdrawing after two decades of war.

In response to the Taliban takeover, many governments have imposed sanctions on Afghanistan’s banking sector and cut billions of dollars worth of development aid.

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.