6.1 Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Afghanistan: 280 People Killed, Felt In Three Countries

JAKARTA - A magnitude 6.1 earthquake killed at least 280 people and injured hundreds more in Afghanistan early Wednesday, officials said, with hundreds of millions of people in three countries feeling the tremors.

The quake struck about 44 km (27 miles) from the town of Khost, near the Pakistan border, the US Geological Survey (USGC) said.

"The shaking was strong and long-lasting", a resident of the Afghan capital, Kabul, posted on the European Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) website, as reported by Reuters on June 22.

"It (the shaking) was strong", said a resident of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

EMSC puts the magnitude at 6.1 even though the USGC says it is 5.9.

Photos in Afghan media showed houses reduced to rubble and bodies covered in blankets on the ground.

Most of the confirmed deaths were in eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, where 255 people were killed and more than 200 injured, Interior Ministry official Salahuddin Ayubi said.

Meanwhile, in Khost province, about 25 people died and 90 others were 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 time to gather details", he said.

Authorities have launched a rescue operation and helicopters were used to reach the injured and retrieve medical and food supplies, he added.

The tremors were felt by an estimated 119 million people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India, the EMSC said on Twitter. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties in Pakistan.

The disaster comes as Afghanistan has experienced a severe economic crisis since the Taliban took power last August when US-led international troops withdrew after two decades of war.

Separately, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they would welcome assistance from any international organization.

Much of South Asia is seismically active, as a tectonic plate known as the Indian plate pushes north onto the Eurasian plate.

In 2015, an earthquake struck Afghanistan's remote northeast, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.