The Taliban has confirmed that at least four people were killed and 70 others were wounded after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan with tremors felt as far as in New Delhi, capital of India, on Tuesday night around 09:20 PM local time.
Its epicentre was 40 KM southeast of Jurm district in the north-eastern Badakhshan province of Afghanistan, near the border with Tajikistan and Pakistan, at a depth of 187.6 km, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Bilal Karimi, a Taliban spokesman, citing officials of the Taliban’s health ministry, confirmed the casualties of the earthquake without providing details that which areas in Afghanistan was hit the most and suffered the casualties.
The Taliban have not provided details on its overall financial loses either.
Local Taliban authorities in the eastern Laghman province, however, confirmed to KabulNow that at least two people were killed and 16 others wounded as a result of the quake in the province.
Last time, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit Afghanistan’s eastern provinces which killed more than 1,000 people and damaged a large number of residential houses in June 2022.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake was felt in Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.
In Pakistan, the earthquake killed at least nine people and wounded 44 others, The Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, reported.
