ISLAMABAD/MUMBAI/KABUL/PESHAWAR – A powerful earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan Monday afternoon, killing more than 200 people and injuring over 900 others in the country and neighboring Pakistan alone, according to media reports and the authorities.
The U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors global seismic activity, said the quake registered a magnitude 7.5 at a depth of 212.5 km at its epicenter, located 254 km north-northeast of Kabul, at 1:39 p.m.
At least 35 people died in Afghanistan, including 12 schoolgirls who were killed in a stampede while trying to run from their school building that collapsed in the northern province of Takhar, according to commercial broadcaster TOLO TV’s online news site.
In Pakistan, at least 186 people died mostly in the country’s northwestern region, Pakistani media reports said. An army spokesman said more than 950 people were injured and the army is hoping to set up tented villages in the worst affected areas.
The quake rattled a wide range of South Asia from Afghanistan to Pakistan to India. Tremors were felt as far away as Islamabad, Kabul and New Delhi.
Indian media said phone communications were severed and electricity shut down in Srinagar, the capital of the northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir, while subways came to a temporary halt in New Delhi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to offer help, Pakistani media reported. Sharif was in London after his trip to the United States. He is cutting his visit short to return to Pakistan, the reports said.
In Pakistan, most casualties were reported in the cities and towns of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, including Chitral, Bajaur, Peshawar and Swat.
“Reports pouring in are not good,” the province’s Chief Minister Pervez Khattak told reporters in Peshawar where hospitals were brimming with injured people from the city and adjoining areas.
Local media said the Korakorm Highway linking Pakistan and China has been blocked by landslides at various points, while in the tourist resort of Naran in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, several hundred tourists were marooned because of the heavy landslides on the road.
The Pakistan Army said it has mobilized troops and helicopters to undertake damage assessments, carry out search and rescue operations and provide relief, with Chief of Army Staff Gen. Raheel Sharif leaving for Peshawar to personally supervise the efforts.
The quake left two Indian army personnel injured in Kashmir when their bunker collapsed, the Press Trust of India reported. In New Delhi, PTI said, people frantically rushed out of their houses and offices as the ground shook and trains came to a halt.
The death toll from the temblor is expected to climb in coming days because communications were down in much of the rugged Hindu Kush mountain range area where the quake was centered.
Reports of deaths had poured in from different areas of both countries by nightfall.
In one of the worst incidents, at least 12 girls were killed in a stampede to get out of their school in the northeastern Afghan province of Takhar.
“They fell under the feet of other students,” said Abdul Razaq Zinda, provincial head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency, who reported heavy damage in Takhar.
Shockwaves were felt in northern India and in Pakistan, where hundreds of people ran out of buildings as the ground rolled beneath them.
“We were very scared. … We saw people leaving buildings, and we were remembering our God,” Pakistani journalist Zubair Khan said by telephone from the Swat Valley northwest of the capital, Islamabad.
“I was in my car, and when I stopped my car, the car itself was shaking as if someone was pushing it back and forth.”
The quake was 213 km deep and centered 254 km northeast of Kabul in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province.
The U.S. Geological Survey initially measured the quake’s intensity at 7.7 then revised it down to 7.5.
Just over a decade ago, a 7.6 magnitude quake in another part of northern Pakistan killed about 75,000 people.
In Afghanistan, a total of 24 were reported dead on Monday, including the 12 schoolgirls, seven people in the eastern province of Nangarhar, two in Nuristan province in the northeast and three in eastern Kunar province, officials said.
In Pakistan, 38 deaths were reported by early evening, most in northern and northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan, officials told Reuters.
Particularly hard-hit in Pakistan was the northern province of Chitral, where 11 people were killed, police official Shah Jehan said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise because so many areas were cut off from communications.
Journalist Gul Hammad Farooqi, 47, said his house had collapsed.
“I was thrown from one side of the road to the other by the strength of the earthquake. I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Farooqi said.
“There is a great deal of destruction here, and my house has collapsed, but thankfully my children and I escaped.”
Farther south, the city of Peshawar reported one death but at least 150 injured people were being treated at the city’s main hospital, the provincial health chief said.
In Afghanistan, international aid agencies working in northern areas reported that cell phone coverage in the affected areas remained down in the hours after the initial quake.
“The problem is we just don’t know. A lot of the phone lines are still down,” said Scott Anderson, deputy head of office for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kabul.
Badakhshan provincial Gov. Shah Waliullah Adib said about 400 houses were destroyed but he had no figures on casualties.
“Right now we are collecting information,” he said
The earthquake struck almost exactly six months after Nepal suffered its worst quake on record, on April 25. Including the toll from a major aftershock in May, 9,000 people lost their lives and 900,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
The mountainous region is seismically active, with earthquakes the result of the Indian subcontinent driving into and under the Eurasian landmass. Sudden tectonic shifts can cause enormous and destructive releases of energy
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