Bhubaneswar: Four days after Afghanistan was hit by a magnitude 6.3 quake and eight powerful aftershocks, killing over 2,000 people, another earthquake, this time of 6.3 magnitude, struck western Afghanistan’s Herat province in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
According to the US Geological Survey and news agency AFP, the quake occurred at a shallow depth at around 05:10 am local time (00:40 GMT), with its epicentre about 29 kilometres north of the city of Herat.
There were no immediate reports of fresh casualties after Wednesday’s earthquake near Herat city, home to more than 500,000 people. The weekend’s earthquakes totally destroyed at least 11 villages in Herat province’s Zenda Jan district.
Afghanistan media outlets said that most residents in Herat were spending their nights living in tents in the open air due to a fear of aftershocks following the weekend tremors. The Taliban government is struggling to send aid and provide shelter on a large scale to those displaced because they do not have good relations with international aid organisations, News18 reported.
The nation is frequently hit by deadly earthquakes, but the weekend disaster was the worst to strike the war-ravaged country in more than 25 years, news agency AFP said in a report, adding that houses in rural Afghanistan are made of mud and are supported by wooden poles, with little in the way of steel or concrete reinforcement. Multi-generational extended families live under the same roof, which means that a serious earthquake has the potential to devastate entire communities.
