At least 250 people have been killed and more than 500 injured following a powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Afghanistan, Taliban officials confirmed on Monday.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake hit approximately 17 miles from Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border, around midnight local time (3:30 p.m. ET Sunday).
Due to the quake’s impact on a remote mountainous region, “it will take time to get the exact information about human losses and damage to the infrastructure,” said Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for the Afghan Public Health Ministry.
Zaman added that a large-scale rescue operation had been launched, mobilizing hundreds of personnel to assist those affected.
The USGS reported that at least five aftershocks, ranging between magnitudes 4.5 and 5.2, followed the main tremor throughout Monday. Aftershocks can persist for days and occasionally surpass the original quake in severity.
Afghanistan remains highly susceptible to earthquakes, situated along multiple fault lines where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. The mountainous terrain of eastern Afghanistan increases the risk of landslides, further complicating rescue efforts.
This latest quake was especially destructive due to its shallow depth—just 5 miles below the surface—amplifying the damage despite its moderate magnitude.
In June 2022, a similarly shallow 5.9-magnitude quake in eastern Afghanistan claimed around 1,000 lives and injured thousands. The following year, three separate 6.3-magnitude earthquakes struck Herat province in western Afghanistan over the course of a week, killing roughly 1,500 people, according to the United Nations.
Monday’s earthquake comes amid growing hardship in Afghanistan, which continues to suffer from prolonged economic distress. The country is grappling with four consecutive years of drought and the return of more than 2.3 million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan in 2025 alone.
“Below-average first and second season crop production and reduced livestock income limit their ability to stock food for the winter,” the Famine Early Warning Systems Network—an initiative by the United States Agency for International Development—noted in a recent report.
Source: CNN
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