An earthquake struck Afghanistan late Friday, resulting in the deaths of 12 individuals, among them eight members of a single family, officials confirmed on Saturday. The tremor, measuring 5.8 in magnitude, occurred at 8:42 pm local time (1612 GMT) at a depth of 186 kilometers in Badakhshan province, located in the northeast of the country, the US Geological Survey.
Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat announced that the earthquake caused four injuries and destroyed five houses completely, while 33 others sustained partial damage. The affected areas span across Kabul, Panjshir, Logar, Nangarhar, Laghman, and Nuristan provinces, impacting approximately 40 families in total.
Shaking from the quake was widely felt, including in the capital city of Kabul. Health Ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman revealed that in the Gosfand Dara area of Kabul Province, eight family members lost their lives, with only a two-year-old child surviving after sustaining injuries. The disaster management agency confirmed the child’s condition following the incident.
Additionally, four fatalities were reported in western Kabul, Abdul Qadeem Abrar, spokesperson for the Afghan Red Crescent Society. Afghanistan’s location along the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates converge, makes it prone to frequent seismic activity.
In a significant development last August, a shallow magnitude 6 earthquake devastated mountainside villages in eastern Afghanistan, claiming over 2,200 lives and marking the deadliest earthquake in the country’s recent history.
