Loss strong earthquakes that hit the province of Herat, west of Afghanistan cause more than 2,000 deaths and 9,000 injuries as reported this Sunday by the Taliban administration.
and a great earthquake of magnitude 6.3 It happened at 12:11 pm last Saturday (+5:30 GMT) at a depth of 14 kilometers and 33 kilometers from the city of Long live Jan! located in the province of Herat and the epicenter of the earthquake. Four consecutive aftershocks of 5.5 followed; 4.7; 6.3; and 5.9 each for one hour; and two more later in 4.8 and 4.9. about one of the deadliest earthquakes in Asian countries in the last two decades.
The press director of the Ministry of Disaster Management, Mule Janan Sayeqtold Reuters on Sunday that 2,053 people were killed, 9,240 were injured and 1,329 houses were damaged or destroyed.
The country’s authorities have sent at least ten rescue teams to the area to look after survivors and provide supplies, such as water, food, and medicine. Humanitarian institutions like the World Health Organization or the Society of Afghan Red Crescent (ARCS) are also on the ground facilitating rescue operations, taking care of victims, and moving residents to safer places.
More than 200 dead have been transferred to various hospitals, an official from the Herat Health Department said, noting that most were women and children.
Tremors caused panic in Herat, it was declared on Saturday that Naseema a resident of the city. “People have left their homes, we are all on the road,” he said in a text message to Reuters.
Major seismic activity
The Asian country is among the countries most prone to natural disasters located in the mountains of Hindu Kush, a point of high seismic activity and a common source of telluric movements in the region. In addition, Afghanistan has a vulnerable population, mostly poor, in addition to the lack of adequate infrastructure to deal with disasters such as floods or earthquakes.
At the end of June 2022, a similar earthquake of magnitude 5.9 in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika and Khost, bordering Pakistan, caused the death of more than a thousand people and injured nearly 1,500, as well as the destruction of hundreds of houses.
Afghanistan is also suffering one of the biggest disasters caused by earthquakes in 1998 in the north of the country, when in February two earthquakes of magnitude 5.9 and 6 caused the death of about 4,000 people. A few months later, at the end of May, another magnitude 7 earthquake hit the area again and resulted in about 5,000 deaths.
