At least 19 people have been killed and more than 200 injured after a powerful earthquake shook large parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The 6.5-magnitude quake damaged buildings, triggered landslides and sent people running into the streets.
It struck on Tuesday evening, centred in a mountainous region in Afghanistan’s north-east near the border with Pakistan.
Tremors from the remote Jurm valley were felt as far away as India.
“It was a terrifying tremor. I had never felt such a tremor before in my life,” Kabul resident Khatera told AFP news agency after rushing out of her fifth-storey apartment.
Ten of the deaths were reported in Afghanistan. A child was among those killed in Laghman province near the country’s border with Pakistan, AFP reported.
There were nine other deaths in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in north-west Pakistan.
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Many families had been out of their homes celebrating the Persian New Year or Nowruz when the quake hit.
The remoteness and rugged terrain mean that getting information about the extent of destruction or deaths in Afghanistan will take time. It is also likely to slow relief and rescue work.
But the damage found so far had been less than feared, emergency workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa told AFP.
Swat district in the province is where most of the damage appears to have taken place in Pakistan. The dead and injured have been taken to local hospitals, while the main road has been blocked because of landslides.
Many in the affected regions braved near-freezing temperatures to sleep outside after the quake – fearing aftershocks. Some had dashed out of their homes barefoot when they felt the shaking.
In the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, a vast multi-storey residential block was evacuated after huge cracks appeared in the building. Phone lines have been affected in both countries.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has asked disaster agencies to take emergency measures to help people.
Tremors were felt over a 1,000-km area that spans India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, according to the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre.
Earthquakes are more likely in this region because it lies at the juncture of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
In June last year, more than 1,000 people were killed after a 5.9-magnitude quake struck Afghanistan’s Paktika province, the country’s deadliest in nearly a quarter of a century.
SOURCE: BBCNEWS
