ISLAMABAD: A strong earthquake centered in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region late Friday killed at least 12 people in Kabul while sending tremors across major cities in Pakistan, AFP reported.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) said the quake struck at 9:13 PM local time with a magnitude of 6.3 and a depth of about 190 kilometeres.
Tremors were widely felt in Islamabad, Peshawar, Chitral, Swat and Shangla, prompting residents to rush out of homes, offices and commercial buildings.
“There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties in Pakistan,” a PMD official said, adding that monitoring was ongoing.
Authorities in Afghanistan confirmed fatalities in the capital.
Hafizullah Basharat, a spokesman for the Kabul governor, said eight people were killed when a house collapsed on the outskirts of Kabul.
“All the victims belonged to the same family, and a child was also injured,” Basharat said.
According to the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center and the US Geological Survey, the earthquake’s epicenter was located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, about 150 kilometers east of Kunduz.
The relatively deep focus allowed the tremors to be felt across a wide region, including northern Pakistan.
Afghanistan’s Health Ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman said emergency services in Kabul and provincial areas had been placed on alert following the quake.
Despite the strong shaking, there were no immediate reports of damage from areas closer to the epicenter, which are remote and often slow to communicate with central authorities.
Seismologists note that the Hindu Kush region is among the most seismically active zones in the world. In recent years, earthquakes have caused significant loss of life in Afghanistan, where vulnerable housing structures and limited disaster response capacity increase risks.
In August last year, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake killed more than 2,200 people in eastern Afghanistan, while another 6.3 quake in November left at least 27 dead and hundreds injured. A series of powerful earthquakes in October 2023 also killed thousands in the western parts of the country.
