A 2nd 6.3 magnitude earthquake has triggered a landslide and sent 117 injured people to the hospital in Afghanistan
- On Saturday, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 struck the Herat province of Afghanistan and caused a death toll of at least 2,000 people.
- On Wednesday, another power earthquake, also with a magnitude of 6.3, struck the same region.
- The recent quake triggered a landslide that blocked a highway and over a hundred people were sent to the hospital.
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After a devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people and leveled entire villages in Herat province, one of the most destructive seismic events in Afghanistan’s recent history, another powerful earthquake hit western Afghanistan on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday’s 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck about 17 miles outside the regional capital of Herat, and the U.S. It has a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), as reported by the Geological Survey. According to Information Ministry spokesman Abdul Wahid Rayan, the landslide blocked the primary Herat-Torgondi road.
Doctors Without Borders, an aid organization known as MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières), said 117 people had been admitted to Herat Regional Hospital since Wednesday’s earthquake. The group has sent additional medical supplies to the hospital and is in the process of setting up four additional medical tents at the facility.
“Our teams are currently engaged in triaging emergency cases and providing care to patients stabilized in medical tents,” MSF previously reported on Twitter, known as X.
All 700 houses in Chahak village were completely destroyed by Wednesday’s earthquake, an area that has not been affected by earthquake activity in recent days. The landscape is now marked by the mounds where these houses once stood. Fortunately, there have been no casualties so far in Chahak, as residents have taken shelter in tents fearing for their safety throughout the week due to ongoing tremors in Herat.
Villagers are traumatized by the loss of their homes and livestock, often their own property. They are also worried about the harsh winter ahead. Some of them have never experienced an earthquake before and are unsure when the ground will stop shaking.
Many residents living in tents have expressed ongoing anxiety as they fear the ground will suddenly open up and swallow them at any moment.
The epicenter of Saturday’s earthquake, also a magnitude 6.3, was about 25 miles northwest of the provincial capital. Several strong aftershocks continue to shake the region.
Taliban officials initially reported that more than 2,000 people had died in the Herat region from earlier earthquakes. Subsequently, they claimed that the earthquakes caused thousands of deaths and injuries, but they did not provide a detailed breakdown of casualties.
In the wake of Saturday’s catastrophic events, very few villages remain in the region’s dusty hills. Survivors lost many family members, and in many places, the number of volunteers who came to search through the rubble and help with mass burials outnumbered the residents still living there.
In the former village of Naib Rafi, which had a population of about 2,500, it was reported that almost no one survived the earthquake except men working outside. Survivors spent the day using excavators to dig long trenches for mass burials.
In a deserted field in Zinda Jaan district, a bulldozer was used to clear a space, removing piles of earth to create long rows of graves.
“It is very challenging to retrieve a family member from a collapsed house and then, within minutes, to rest underground once again in a nearby grave,” explained Mir Agha of Herat City. He was among the hundreds of volunteers who came to help local residents during this difficult time.
The Taliban reported that nearly 2,000 houses in 20 villages were destroyed by the earthquakes. In the affected area, there is only one government-owned hospital to provide medical assistance.
As of Tuesday, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq Zinda Jaan was the hardest-hit area, with more than 1,300 confirmed dead and nearly 500 people still unaccounted for.
He also noted that U.N. satellite images showed widespread destruction in the Injeel district.
“Our humanitarian colleagues are concerned about the vulnerability of children who have experienced significant emotional distress due to the earthquake,” he added.
Afghanistan is no stranger to earthquakes due to multiple fault lines and frequent interactions between three neighboring tectonic plates. Afghanistan’s population has had to deal with the aftermath of recent seismic events, with a 6.5-magnitude earthquake in March affecting large parts of western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. In addition, an earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan in June 2022, resulting in the destruction of stone and mud-brick houses and the loss of at least 1,000 lives.
Many neighboring countries, including Pakistan, have provided humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. However, since Monday, the promised aid from Pakistan has stopped.
As of Wednesday morning, the promised supplies from Pakistan had yet to leave for Afghanistan. Officials in Pakistan are awaiting “clearance” from the Taliban. The information was provided by two government officials in Islamabad, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Tensions between the two countries have been rising since Pakistan announced an Oct. 31 deadline for undocumented migrants, including the 1.7 million Afghans living in the country without legal status, to avoid the risk of arrest and forced deportation.