The number of people killed by the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that struck western Afghanistan on Saturday rises to “about 120”, according to regional disaster management authorities.
“At the moment there are more than 1,000 injured women, children and elderly people in our records, and about 120 people have lost their lives,” said Mosa Ashari, head of disaster management for the province of Herat, reports Afp.
The Afghan authorities fear that hundreds of people have died as a result of the seven earthquakes of up to 6.3 magnitudes recorded this Saturday in the district of Zinda Jan, in the Afghan province of Herat, in the west of the country.
“There is no town that does not have hundreds of dead and the number of victims may increase even more,” the press director of the Ministry of Disaster Management, Mula Janan Sayeq, informed EFE, although search operations continue.
The authorities’ estimate is based on the number of people who lived in the affected villages, inhabited by approximately a thousand people, turned into rubble.
Although there is no official count of victims from the earthquakes recorded today, the NGO Doctors Without Borders said it was supporting medical care at the Herat regional hospital, “where more than 300 injured people have arrived,” according to a report online. social X, formerly Twitter.
“We have installed 5 medical tents to house up to 80 patients and we are supporting the emergency room with personnel and medical supplies,” added the international organization.
Afghanistan felt at least seven tremors this day. The first of all, the largest, occurred at 12:11 (5:30 GMT) at a depth of 14 kilometers and 33 kilometers from the city of Zindah Jan, located in the province of Herat, according to the USGS.
Four consecutive aftershocks of 5.5 followed; 4.7; 6.3; and 5.9 respectively in a period of one hour.
The fourth earthquake, also measuring 6.3, was recorded about ten kilometers deep and about 29 kilometers from Zindah Jan.
Later, the US seismology service felt two more tremors almost an hour later in Herat province of 4.8 and 4.9 degrees, respectively.
The Asian country is among the countries most prone to natural disasters, being located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, a point of great seismic activity and a common point of origin of telluric movements in the region.
However, Afghanistan has a very vulnerable population, mostly poor, in addition to lacking sufficient infrastructure to deal with disasters such as floods or earthquakes.
At the end of June last year, a similar earthquake of magnitude 5.9 in the eastern Afghan provinces of Paktika and Khost, bordering Pakistan, caused the death of more than a thousand people and injured some 1,500, in addition to the destruction of hundreds of households.
Afghanistan also suffered one of the largest disasters caused by earthquakes in 1998 in the north of the country, when two earthquakes of magnitude 5.9 and 6 in February caused the death of some 4,000 people. A few months later, at the end of May, another magnitude 7 earthquake hit the area again and caused around 5,000 deaths.
