A new earthquake with a magnitude of 4.9 struck northwestern Afghanistan on Monday. According to the American earthquake monitoring station USGS, the epicenter was 33 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital Herat. This means that the hope of finding and rescuing survivors diminishes.
The border province near Iran was devastated by several tremors on Saturday morning, the two heaviest measuring 6.3, the US Earthquake Observatory said. After the devastating series of earthquakes, hopes of rescuing survivors continue to dim. Emergency workers and doctors who rushed to the disaster areas this weekend reported much destruction.
Houses were razed to the ground in numerous villages northwest of Herat, eyewitnesses said on Sunday. The Ministry of Disaster Relief estimates the number of deaths on Sunday at more than 2,400 and another 2,000 people were injured. The figures could not initially be independently verified. It would be one of the worst earthquakes in Afghanistan in decades.
The UN emergency aid organization OCHA assumes that the number of victims will increase when remote areas are reached. More than 11,000 people were affected by the earthquake. The United Nations released five million dollars (4.7 million euros) in emergency aid on Sunday and announced an upcoming appeal for donations after assessing needs.
The earth shook more than ten times
On Saturday morning, several earthquakes shocked the residents of the Afghan border province near Iran. Within just a few hours, the earth shook nine times and more than a dozen villages were largely destroyed. The district of Sindajan, northwest of Herat, was the hardest hit.
The European Union (EU) assured the affected population of its full solidarity, as EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell wrote on the short message service X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday evening. “EU teams have already reached the disaster area to help,” he said, without giving details.
The walls were also shaking in Iran
Even 300 kilometers away in neighboring Iran, walls and ceiling lights shook on Saturday, as residents of the metropolis of Mashhad said. There too, the authorities have put emergency services on standby and sent teams to the border to investigate possible damage.
Reminder of last year’s catastrophe
The earthquakes bring back memories of last summer’s catastrophe, when more than a thousand people died in an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale in the east of the country. After decades of conflict, many villages of simple construction are ill-equipped to deal with earthquakes.
Source: Krone
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