Afghanistan: Magnitude 6.3 earthquake hits western region
October 15, 2023
Another strong earthquake struck western Afghanistan on Sunday morning, in the same area where a series of powerful tremors last weekend left more than a thousand people dead.
The magnitude 6.3 quake hit just after 8:00 a.m. local time (0330 GMT/UTC) with an epicenter 33 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Herat city, the capital of the western province of the same name, the US Geological Survey said.
A magnitude 5.5 aftershock followed 20 minutes later.
National disaster management officials said they were still investigating the scale of destruction.
Abdul Qadeem Mohammadi, head doctor at Herat Regional Hospital, told AFP news agency that "so far 93 injured and one dead have been registered."
A spokesman for the regional governor put the number of injured at 35.
Most residents were still sleeping outside a week after the start of a series of quakes in the region, fearful of aftershocks pulling down their homes in the night, a reporter for AFP news agency said.
Earlier quakes killed more than a thousand people
Another magnitude 6.3 quake and eight powerful aftershocks jolted the same part of Herat on October 7, toppling swaths of rural homes.
The Taliban government said more than 1,000 people were killed in last week's tremors, while the World Health Organization (WHO) put the figure at nearly 1,400 late Saturday.
More than 90% of the people killed a week ago were women and children, UN officials reported Thursday.
Thousands impacted by quakes
The WHO says nearly 20,000 people have been affected by the disasters.
The initial October 7 quake, numerous aftershocks and a second 6.3-magnitude quake on Wednesday flattened villages, destroying hundreds of mud-brick homes that could not withstand such force.
Schools, health clinics and other village facilities also collapsed.
Besides rubble and funerals after that devastation, there was little left of the villages in the region's dusty hills.
The earlier quakes were also felt in neighboring Iran.
Residents of the metropolis of Mashhad in Iran, around 300 kilometers from the earthquake zone, reported the walls of houses were shaking.
Earthquakes are frequent in western and central Afghanistan and are mostly caused by the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates jutting against each other.
Less aid available for victims under Taliban rule
Providing shelter on a large scale will be a challenge for the country's Taliban authorities, who seized power in August 2021 and have tense relations with international aid organizations.
Most rural homes are made of mud and built around wooden support poles, with little in the way of steel or concrete reinforcement.
Multi-generational extended families generally live under the same roof, meaning serious earthquakes can devastate communities.
Afghanistan is already suffering a dire humanitarian crisis, with the widespread withdrawal of foreign aid following the Taliban government's return to power.
mm/wd (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)