PESHAWAR/KABUL - A magnitude 6.5 earthquake slammed Pakistan and Afghanistan late Tuesday, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 90, according to government officials.
According to a Pakistani government official, at least nine people were killed and 44 were injured in northwest Pakistan, and hospitals in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province were placed in an emergency situation overnight.
At least four people were murdered and 50 were injured in Afghanistan, according to a health ministry official. Authorities said that houses and structures in both nations had been destroyed.
The quake was felt by 285 million people in Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.
The epicenter was located in the Hindu Kush mountains, in the sparsely inhabited northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, 40 kilometers southeast of Jurm town, at a depth of 187 kilometers, according to the US Geological Survey. stated the Geological Survey.
According to Abdul Basit, a senior provincial official in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, in addition to the dead and injured, at least 19 houses were damaged.
Two persons were killed in the eastern province of Laghman, according to Shafiullah Rahimi, a spokeswoman for Afghanistan's disaster mitigation ministry.
Since the Indian plate is pushing north towards the Eurasian plate, large regions of South Asia are seismically active.
Last year, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed almost 1,000 people.
A 7.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked northern Pakistan in 2005 killed at least 73,000 people.
