A major natural disaster struck a remote area of northern Afghanistan on Monday, killing more than 300 people there and in neighboring Pakistan, and injuring more than 1,700.
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Most of the casualties occurred in the neighboring Pakistan.
According to a report by the Agence France-Presse (AFP), at least 277 people were reportedly killed in the quake so far, and officials expected the toll to rise as search and rescue missions continue.
Thousands spent the night outdoors in near-freezing temperatures reluctant to go back inside for fear of aftershocks, Pakistani media reported.
Rescue teams have been sent to remote mountainous areas in both countries, where the effects of the natural disaster are still unclear. In Taloqan, just west of Badakhshan province where the epicenter was located, at least twelve girls were killed in a stampede at their school.
“In one Afghan town, 12 school girls died trying to escape a building via a stairway”.
The epicentre of the magnitude 7.5 tremor was in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region known for its seismic activity. As buildings in Islamabad shook, panicked residents poured into the streets, and many recited verses from the Quran.
In Pakistan, buildings collapsed while Afghan capital Kabul experienced power outages and disconnected phone lines. In Afghanistan, local officials reported that at least 65 people had been killed, while 271 others were injured, according to the Pajhwok news agency.
The Associated Press reports that there have been over 100 casualties, mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Government-led relief operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan had started their operations and the United Nations announced it stands ready to help.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif convened a high-level emergency meeting on Tuesday to review the rescue and relief activities, the Prime Minister’s office said. “These are the badly and worst-affected areas, and you know that there are hilly and there are inaccessible areas, and a few of the areas have been reported to…at the moment, they are blocked, they are cut off”.
In Nepal twin quakes in May killed more than 8,900 people, triggered landslides and destroyed half a million homes.
“What we’re hearing is that a lot of mud houses have collapsed, but huge buildings have been spared from the quake”, said Gorkhmaz Huseynov, the head of the global Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Pakistan.
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A relatively powerful quake jolted Afghanistan including capital Kabul on Monday afternoon with Richter scale recorded at 7.5 magnitude.
