More than 100 people have been killed in a powerful earthquake which has hit north-eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tremors from the magnitude 7.5 quake were also felt in northern India and Tajikistan. At least 12 of the victims were schoolgirls killed in a crush as they tried to get out of their building.
The earthquake was centred in the mountainous Hindu Kush region, 76km (45 miles) south of Faizabad, the US Geological Survey reported.
Buildings have been evacuated and communications disrupted in many areas.
Sunnatullah Timour, a spokesman for the governor of the Afghan province of Takhar, told the BBC that as well as the fatalities at the girls’ school, another 25 students were injured in the stampede.
Deaths and injuries have also been reported in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
In Pakistan, the disaster management authority said 94 people had been confirmed dead in the north of the country.
Seventy-one of those deaths were in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, 18 in the federally administered tribal areas, four in the Gilgit-Baltistan region and one in Punjab.
In the city of Karimabad, in Gilgit-Baltistan, a witness who gave his name as Anas told the BBC that the quake had sent a landslide crashing into the Hunza river.
“At first it was as if someone was shaking us. There were about 20 of us and we just held on to each other,” he said.
“Right after that we saw a major landslide. Some people say it was a glacier that came down, some people say it was a hill. It fell right in front of our eyes.”
The USGS estimated that the quake happened at a depth of 212km. The magnitude was initially put at 7.7 but later downgraded.
An aftershock measured at 4.8 magnitude struck shortly afterwards.
BBC
UM– USEKE.RW
