622 Killed And More Than 1,500 Injured By Earthquake In Afghanistan

Earthquake illustration. (Unsplash/Jens Aber)

JAKARTA - At least 622 people were killed and more than 1,500 injured as a result of the earthquake that hit eastern Afghanistan, authorities said on Monday.

The Taliban-led Afghan Interior Ministry said the earthquake that hit the country had a magnitude of 6 on the Richter scale.

In Kabul, the capital, health authorities said rescue teams are racing to reach remote villages spread across areas with long history of earthquakes and floods.

"The figure of just a few clinics shows more than 400 people were injured and dozens were injured," ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman said in a statement warning of a possible higher number of casualties.

Images from Reuters Television showed helicopters carrying affected victims, while residents helped soldiers and medics carry the injured victims into ambulances.

Three villages were leveled to land in Kunar Province, with severe damage to many other villages, the Ministry of Health said.

Reports show 250 people were killed and 500 injured, said Najibullah Hanif, head of information for Kunar Province, adding the number could change.

Initial reports showed 30 people were killed in one village, while hundreds of injured victims were taken to hospital, authorities said.

Rescue teams rushed to find survivors in an area bordering the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area in Pakistan, where houses made of mud and rock were razed to the ground due to a midnight earthquake that hit a depth of 10 km (6 miles).

"So far, no foreign government has provided support for rescue or relief efforts," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This earthquake is considered to be increasingly draining the resources of South Asian countries that have grappled with the humanitarian crisis, ranging from a sharp decline in aid to the massive rejection of citizens from neighboring countries.

Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountains, where tectonic plates of India and Eurasia meet.

A series of earthquakes in its western region killed more than 1,000 people last year, underscoring the vulnerability of one of the world's poorest countries to natural disasters.