Afghanistan: At least 320 people have died so far and over 500 are injured following a number of successive earthquakes striking Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said. They also said that a number of buildings were damaged in the country, trapping people under the rubble, BBC reported.
According to the British Geological Survey, a number of earthquakes, four with magnitudes of 5.5, struck near the city of Herat. Two other earthquakes were recorded at magnitudes of 6.3 in Afghanistan. The spokesperson of Afghanistan's national disaster authority, Mohammad Abdullah Jan, said that four villages bore the brunt of the earthquakes and aftershocks.
A map from the US Geological Survey indicated a total of seven earthquakes near Herat. At least five powerful earthquakes struck the city around noon, Herat city resident Abdul Shakor Samadi said.
"Houses, offices and shops are all empty and there are fears of more earthquakes. My family and I were inside our home, I felt the quake," said a resident from Herat.
Additionally, telephone connections were also affected in the area. Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban-appointed deputy prime minister for economic affairs, expressed his condolences to the dead and injured in Herat and Badghis.
Afghanistan's Herat city is located 20km east of the border with Iran and is considered to be the cultural capital of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is an earthquake-prone country, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range as it lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
Earlier, on Tuesday, an earthquake of magnitude 4.7 on the Richter Scale hit Afghanistan's Fayzabad, the National Center for Seismology said. The earthquake occurred at 16:29:08 (IST) and struck at a depth of 10 kilometres.
Over 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were rendered homeless after an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck the Paktika province in June last year.
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