KABUL: A powerful earthquake struck a rural, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border early Wednesday, killing at least 920 people and injuring 600 others, authorities said. Officials warned the death toll would likely rise.
Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6 temblor that struck Paktika province, but it comes as the international community largely has left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country last year amid the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. military from the longest war in its history. That likely will complicate any relief efforts for this country of 38 million people.
The state-run Bakhtar news agency reported the death toll and said rescuers were arriving by helicopter. The news agency's director-general, Abdul Wahid Rayan, wrote on Twitter that 90 houses have been destroyed in Paktika and dozens of people are believed trapped under the rubble.
Footage from Paktika province near the Pakistan border showed victims being carried into helicopters to be airlifted from the area. Images widely circulating online from the province showed destroyed stone houses, with residents picking through clay bricks and other rubble.
Bakhtar posted footage of a resident receiving IV fluids from a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home and others sprawled on gurneys.
"A severe earthquake shook four districts of Paktika province, killing and injuring hundreds of our countrymen and destroying dozens of houses," Bilal Karimi, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban government, separately wrote on Twitter. "We urge all aid agencies to send teams to the area immediately to prevent further catastrophe."
Neighboring Pakistan's Meteorological Department said the quake's epicentre was in Afghanistan's Paktika province, just near the border and some 50 kilometres (31 miles) southwest of the city of Khost. It put the earthquake at a magnitude of 6.1. Tremors were felt in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in the eastern Punjab province.
The US Geological Survey recorded the magnitude as slightly lower at 5.9, putting the depth at just 10 km (6 miles) -- another factor that could increase the damage.
In just one district of the neighbouring Khost province, the earthquake killed at least 25 people and injured over 95 others, local officials said.
In Kabul, Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund convened an emergency meeting at the presidential palace to coordinate the relief effort for victims in Paktika and Khost.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis offered prayers for all those killed and injured and for the "suffering of the dear Afghan population."
The "response is on its way," the UN resident coordinator in Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov, wrote on Twitter.
Some remote areas of Pakistan saw reports of damage to homes near the Afghan border, but it wasn't immediately clear if that was due to rain or the earthquake, said Taimoor Khan, a disaster management spokesperson in the area.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in a statement offered his condolences over the earthquake, saying his nation will provide help to the Afghan people.
The European seismological agency, EMSC, said the earthquake's tremors were felt over 500 kilometres (310 miles) by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Mountainous Afghanistan and the larger region of South Asia, where the Indian tectonic plate collides with the Eurasian plate to the north, have long been vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.
In 2015, a major earthquake that struck the country's northeast killed over 200 people in Afghanistan and neighbouring northern Pakistan.
(More information awaited)