At least 280 people have been killed in an intense 6.1 magnitude earthquake that hit eastern Afghanistan.
At least 90 homes in the province of Paktika were destroyed by the early morning earthquakes, and rescuers looked urgently for survivors after arriving by helicopter.
After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last year, the international world essentially withdrew, which will probably make any relief operations for this 38 million-person nation more difficult.
Numerous individuals are reportedly trapped under the debris, according to the director-general of the state-run Bakhtar news agency, Abdul Wahid Rayan, who also tweeted the fatality toll.
Victims were seen being loaded into helicopters in the Paktika region, which is close to the Pakistani border, in order to be flown out of the area.
Images from the province that were widely shared online showed stone homes that had been wrecked, with locals rummaging among clay bricks and other debris.
In addition to people lying on gurneys, Bakhtar tweeted video of a resident receiving IV fluids from a plastic chair outside his home’s ruins.
According to the US Geological Survey (USGC), the earthquake occurred around 27 miles from the city of Khost, close to the Pakistani border.
‘Strong and lengthy jolts,’ a Kabul, Afghanistan, resident wrote on the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre website (EMSC).
‘It was strong,’ said a resident of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
Most of the confirmed deaths were in Paktika, where 255 people had been killed and more than 200 injured, said interior ministry official Salahuddin Ayubi.
In Khost province, 25 people had been killed and 90 taken to hospital, he said.
‘The death toll is likely to rise as some of the villages are in remote areas in the mountains and it will take some time to collect details,’ he said.
‘A severe earthquake shook four districts of Paktika province, killing and injuring hundreds of our countrymen and destroying dozens of houses,’ Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, separately wrote on Twitter. ‘We urge all aid agencies to send teams to the area immediately to prevent further catastrophe.’
Neighbouring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department put the earthquake at a magnitude 6.1. Tremors were felt in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in the eastern Punjab province.
The European seismological agency, EMSC, said the earthquake’s tremors were felt over 310 miles by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in a statement offered his condolences over the earthquake, saying his nation will provide help to the Afghan people.
The disaster comes as Afghanistan has been enduring a severe economic crisis since the Taliban took over August, as U.S.-led international forces were withdrawing after two decades of war.
In response to the Taliban takeover, many governments have imposed sanctions on Afghanistan’s banking sector and cut billions of dollars worth of development aid.
Humanitarian aid has continued and international agencies such as the United Nations operate in the country.
An Afghan foreign ministry spokesman said they would welcome help from any international organisation.
Large parts of south Asia are seismically active because a tectonic plate known as the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.
In 2015, an earthquake struck the remote Afghan northeast, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.
A similar 6.1 earthquake in 2002 killed about 1,000 people in northern Afghanistan.
And in 1998, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan’s remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people.