…..
More than 1,500 people are feared dead and 4,000 injured after a
series of earthquakes struck northern Afghanistan on Monday night and
Tuesday, government officials said. A Foreign Ministry official
said the district capital of Nahrin, near the epicentre in the rugged
Hindu Kush mountains, had been destroyed and a Defence Ministry
spokesman said 1,500 homes had crumbled.
The
Defence Ministry spokesman told Reuters: “Our reports say there are
1,500 dead, 4,000 injured, at least 1,500 homes destroyed and 20,000
people are homeless.” “The district capital of Nahrin was destroyed,” he said of a city of mainly mud buildings in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
“We are sending rescue teams but aftershocks make relief efforts dangerous,” the spokesman said.
This
is the second major earthquake to hit northern Afghanistan this month.
More than 100 people were buried by a landslide in a remote village in
neighbouring Samangan province on March 3 after the last quake.
Aid
workers in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, some 200 km (120 miles)
northwest of Nahrin, said they felt the quake on Monday night and ran
out into the streets. Light shocks were also felt in the Pakistani
capital Islamabad.
The
Seismological Office in the Pakistan city of Peshawar said the
earthquake struck at 1457 GMT on Monday and measured 6.0 on the Richter
scale. “It’s epicentre was in the Hindu Kush mountains,”
said official Lataf Gul. “Since
then aftershocks are being recorded. The last recorded was at 0655 GMT
today (Tuesday) with an intensity of 5.0 on the Richter scale.”
Earthquakes are relatively frequent in the Hindu Kush mountain range. In 1998, two earthquakes killed about 8,500 people and destroyed tens of thousands of houses in Takhar and Badakhshan provinces.
….
Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-106817/Hundreds-feared-dead-Afghan-earthquake.html
……
regards