More than 100 people were injured in Pakistan’s northern city of Peshawar, said Dr Muhammad Sadiq, the head of emergency services at a government hospital there.
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“Fortunately it occurred at a depth of more than 200km and so the shaking of the ground surface was less than it would have been for a shallower quake of the same magnitude”, he said.
In Pakistan, local news channels showed people evacuating office buildings. In addition to the 12 schoolgirls in Takhar, seven people died in the eastern province of Nangarhar, two in Nuristan province in the northeast, three in eastern Kunar province and nine in Badakhshan, officials said.
“For an natural disaster measuring on such a magnitude, the aftershocks can range between five or six on the Richter Scale”, he added. It said the epicenter was 213 kilometers (130 miles) deep and 73 kilometers (45 miles) south of the provincial capital, Fayzabad.
Injured people were pouring into Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, an official said. The US Geological Survey originally said the quake had a 7.7 magnitude, but later downgraded it to 7.5. He said more than 60 homes in Taluqan were destroyed. Afghan officials report at least 34 deaths in that country’s northeastern provinces.
Abdul Latif Khan, a senior official at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, says Monday’s quake killed 46 people in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
In the northern town of Baramulla in the Indian-controlled part of the disputed Kashmir region, police officer Imtiyaz Hussain says a 65-year-old woman became so panicked she had a heart attack and died.
An quake with a magnitude of 7.5 hit northeast Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan and was felt across the region as far north as Tajikistan and as far south as India. “The injured suffered multiple injuries due to building collapse”, said hospital spokesman Syed Jamil Shah.
One wrote: “Massive quake in Pakistan”. There were no immediate reports of major damage. In Islamabad, buildings shook and people poured into the streets in a panic, with many reciting verses from the Quran.
Strong tremors were felt in Kabul, New Delhi and Islamabad on Monday.
Casualties and damage are unclear at this stage.
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Geophysicist Amy Vaughan of the USGS tells NPR’s Newscast desk that the region is “very seismically active”, noting that this is where the Eurasian and Indian plates converge.
