A 6.0-magnitude earthquake that hit eastern Afghanistan killed 622 people, with more than 1,500 injured, the interior ministry spokesman told AFP on Monday.

In the earthquake that struck just before midnight on Sunday, “610 people were killed and 1,300 were injured in Kunar province, with numerous houses destroyed”, spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said, adding that in Nangarhar province, 12 people were killed and another 255 were injured.

The earthquake struck just before midnight, shaking buildings from Kabul to neighbouring Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, around 370 kilometres (230 miles) away, for several seconds, AFP journalists said.

The epicentre of the quake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of eight kilometres, was 27 kilometres from the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, according to the US Geological Survey.

Shallow quakes tend to cause more damage than deep tremors.

A series of aftershocks followed throughout the night, including a powerful and shallow 5.2-magnitude quake just after 4 am (23:30 GMT Sunday).

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.

Nangarhar province was also hit by flooding overnight Friday to Saturday, which killed five people and destroyed crops and property, provincial authorities said.

Last year, a series of strong quakes jolted Afghanistan’s Herat province, killing more than 1,500 people and damaging or destroying more than 63,000 homes, according to an assessment by the United Nations, the European Union and the Asian Development Bank.

Ravaged by four decades of war, Afghanistan is already contending with a humanitarian disaster.

With the return of the Taliban, foreign aid to Afghanistan has shrunk dramatically, undermining the already impoverished nation’s ability to respond to disasters.

In 2015, more than 380 people were killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan when a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake ripped across the two countries, with the bulk of the deaths in Pakistan.

In that disaster, 12 young Afghan girls were crushed to death in a stampede as they tried to flee their shaking school building.

AFP

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