Hundreds are feared dead or injured after a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan late at night, in a mountainous region near the Pakistan border, local officials reported.
The tremor hit at around 11:47 p.m. local time, about 27 kilometers northeast of Jalalabad, Afghanistan’s fifth-largest city. Authorities said Nangarhar and Kunar provinces suffered the heaviest damage, prompting the Taliban government to call for urgent international assistance.
In Kunar, landslides blocked key roads, forcing police and rescue teams to rely on helicopters to reach affected areas. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the quake originated 8 kilometers below the surface, with shaking classified as severe.
Preliminary reports from the Afghan health ministry indicated that 30 people were killed in a single village, though officials warned that full casualty figures would take time to confirm, given the region’s scattered settlements and history of disasters.
“The number of dead and injured is significant, but due to the area’s inaccessibility, our teams are still gathering information,” ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman said. Hundreds of wounded have already been admitted to hospitals, provincial information chief Najibullah Hanif added, with the toll expected to rise as reports arrive from remote districts with poor infrastructure.
Roughly 20 minutes after the initial tremor, a second quake measuring 4.5 struck the same area.
