HERAT, Afghanistan (AP) — Another strong earthquake struck a swath of western Afghanistan Wednesday morning, after an earlier quake killed more than 2,000 people and leveled entire villages in Herat province, one of the most destructive quakes in the country’s modern history .
The magnitude 6.3 quake struck on Wednesday about 28 kilometers (17 miles) outside Herat, the capital of the province of the same name, and at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), according to the Geological Survey. According to Information Ministry spokesman Abdul Wahid Rayan, this caused a landslide that blocked the main road between Herat and Torghondi.
According to the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, the Herat regional hospital suffered 117 injuries from Wednesday’s earthquake. The organization said it had sent additional medical supplies to the center and said it was preparing four additional medical tents on site.
“Our teams are helping triage emergencies and caring for stabilized patients who are placed in medical tents,” Doctors Without Borders said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Wednesday’s earthquake also destroyed 700 houses in the town of Chahak that had survived the previous days’ tremors unscathed. Now there were mountains of earth where houses once stood. However, there were no reports of deaths in Chahak as people took shelter in tents this week fearing the constant tremors.
Neighbors expressed concern about the loss of their homes and livestock, often their only possessions, and feared the arrival of the harsh winter months. Some said they had never experienced an earthquake and wondered if the earth would stop shaking.
Many said they had not had a moment’s peace in the tents because they feared that “at any moment the earth would open up and swallow us up.”
The epicenter of Saturday’s earthquake – also of magnitude 6.3 – was recorded about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the provincial capital and had several strong aftershocks.
Taliban officials claimed that more than 2,000 people died in Herat after the initial quakes. They later said the earthquakes had killed and injured thousands of people, but gave no number of casualties.
Little remains of the towns in the region’s dusty hills other than rubble and burials. Survivors tried to come to terms with the loss of multiple family members at once, and in many places the surviving residents outnumbered volunteers who came to search the ruins and dig up mass graves.
In Naib Rafi, a village once home to about 2,500 people, people said almost no one was alive except the men who had gone to work when the quake hit the ground. Survivors worked all day with excavators to dig long graves for mass burials.
In a barren field in Zinda Jan district, an excavator removed piles of earth to make way for a long row of graves.
“It is very difficult to find a relative in a destroyed house and have to bury him or her a few minutes later in a nearby grave, again underground,” said Mir Agha from the city of Herat, who joined hundreds of volunteers had connected. to help those affected.
Almost 2,000 houses in 20 villages were destroyed, the Taliban reported. There is only one government hospital in the area affected by the earthquakes.
On Tuesday, United Nations deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Zinda Khan was the worst-hit area, with more than 1,300 people dead and nearly 500 people still missing.
UN satellite images also showed extreme levels of destruction in the Injil district. “Our humanitarian colleagues warn that children are particularly vulnerable and have suffered severe psychological distress as a result of the earthquake,” he said.
Earthquakes are common in Afghanistan, where there are multiple fault lines and frequent movements between three nearby tectonic plates. Afghans are still reeling from other recent earthquakes, such as a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in March that shook western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, and an earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan in June 2022, which leveled houses made of mud bricks and stones and at least 1,000 people were killed.
Faiez reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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