Another magnitude 6.5 earthquake in Afghanistan, in the same area that shook the week before, causes one death and dozens of injuries

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 shook the city of Herat, in the northwest of the city Afghanistan leaving at least one person dead and dozens injured in the region that was hit by two other earthquakes early this month that killed a thousand people.

The earthquake struck at 03:36 GMT, 33 kilometers from Herat, in the western province of the same name, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. Two less intense aftershocks followed.

Abdul Qadeem Mohammadi, head of Herat Regional Hospital, said one death and about 120 injuries have been recorded so far.

Disaster management authorities, in turn, indicated that they were still assessing the extent of destruction closest to the epicenter.

Two seismic movements

According to the USGS, a first magnitude 6.5 earthquake was recorded around 8 a.m. local time (3:30 GMT) in Herat province, at a depth of 6.3 kilometers and about 30 kilometers north of the capital.

Half an hour later, a second magnitude 5.4 earthquake struck the province again, about 10 kilometers north of Herat. The province has recorded a total of four aftershocks, with the last measuring 4.4 at 12:34 local time (8:04 GMT).

This Afghan region was rocked last Saturday by several earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 6.3 and successive aftershocks of significant intensity, destroying about twenty villages.

Thousands killed in previous earthquake

On October 7, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake and eight powerful aftershocks shook the area, toppling rows of rural houses and also injuring hundreds of people.

He The Taliban government estimated the number of deaths at more than a thousandwhile the World Health Organization (WHO) indicated on Saturday that approximately 1,400 deaths were caused by the earthquake.

Afghan government officials today reduced the death toll from the earthquakes that hit the country’s western districts to around 1,000, revising their original figure of more than 4,000 casualties.

Since the earthquakes, thousands of people in the province have spent the night in cars, gardens or tents, as their homes turned to dust.

“Many of our compatriots have nowhere to live and the nights are very cold,” Nizami said.

Four days later, as thousands of terrified residents were without shelter and volunteers searched for survivors, another quake of the same intensity killed one person and injured 130 others.

More than 90% of those killed in the earthquakes were women and children, Unicef ​​reported on Wednesday.

The United Nations more than said that 20,000 people were affected by the emergency.

At least six rural towns in the Zenda Jan district were completely destroyed.

Need for shelters

Afghanistan is already facing a serious humanitarian crisis, with large-scale withdrawals of foreign aid after the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Providing shelter before the arrival of winter will be one of the major challenges facing the Taliban authorities, who took power in August 2021 and have tense relations with international aid agencies.

Afghanistan is regularly hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush Mountains, near the junction between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.

In June 2022, an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale left more than a thousand dead and tens of thousands of people homeless in Paktika province (southeast). (JO)