Daily Times

According to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Northwestern Afghanistan on Wednesday.

the quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres and was one of several jolts that shook similar regions of Afghanistan over the weekend.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake’s epicentre was about 29 kilometres to the country’s Herat province’s north.

The province was earlier shaken by an earthquake that destroyed entire villages and affected 12,000 people, according to estimates from the United Nations (UN). Rescue teams and volunteers have been working on the ground to find the survivors since Saturday.

The number of people killed and injured in the previous earthquakes has been reported by local and national officials in conflicting numbers, but the disaster ministry has stated that 2,053 people perished.

The disaster management ministry’s spokesman, Mullah Janan Sayeq, stated that “we can’t give exact numbers for dead and wounded as it is in flux.”

Following the earthquake that occurred near Herat city, which is home to more than 500,000 people, there were no new casualties immediately reported.

According to the United Nations, the earlier earthquakes completely destroyed at least 11 villages in the Zenda Jan district of Herat province.

“Not a single house is left, not even a room where we could stay at night,” said 40-year-old Mohammad Naeem, who told AFP he lost 12 relatives, including his mother, after Saturday’s earthquakes.

“We can’t live here anymore. You can see, our family got martyred here. How could we live here?”

Because they were afraid of aftershocks from the weekend tremors, many Herat residents were said to have been spending their nights in open-air tents.

Large-scale housing provision will be difficult for Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities, who took control in August 2021 and have strained relations with international aid agencies.

Although deadly earthquakes frequently hit Afghanistan, the disaster over the weekend was the worst to hit the war-torn nation in more than 25 years.

In rural Afghanistan, the majority of houses are made of mud and constructed around wooden support poles with little steel or concrete reinforcement.

Since extended families with multiple generations frequently share one roof, devastating earthquakes can wreak havoc on entire towns.

With the widespread cutoff of foreign aid, Afghanistan is already experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis. The Herat province, which borders Iran and is home to about 1.9 million people, has been experiencing a drought that has lasted for years.