A strong 6.2 magnitude earthquake has hit western Afghanistan, leaving at least 15 people dead and scores injured, officials say.
“These are the numbers that have been brought to the central hospital so far, but this is not the final figure,” the public health director of Herat province Mohammad Taleb Shahid as quoted as saying Saturday.
Three massive earthquakes in the early hours of Saturday and several weaker ones rattled the western region of Afghanistan within a half-hour timeframe.
The most recent earthquake measured 6.2 on the Richter scale and was recorded at 12:42 pm. Before that, a 5.6 magnitude quake occurred at 12:19 pm, preceded by a 6.1 magnitude tremor at 12:11 pm.
The epicenter of this seismic activity has been pinpointed 7km deep and 40km distance northwest of Herat city in western Afghanistan.
This series of quakes follows a recent pattern of seismic activity in the area. On September 4, Afghanistan experienced a 4.4 magnitude earthquake in Faizabad.
Also, on August 28, another earthquake, measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale, shook parts of the country.
Tremors were felt in neighboring countries, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Further west along the Hindu-Kush Himalaya mountain range, Nepal on Tuesday experienced four earthquakes in rapid succession.
The strongest quake registered 6.2 magnitude. The tremors in Nepal reverberated in parts of northern India as well.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 8.7 struck Assam in northeast India on August 15, 1950. It was the strongest recorded earthquake in the Himalaya region; however, it hit a low-population region and caused a relatively low number of casualties compared to high-population population regions where smaller earthquakes had hit.
Large-scale earthquakes with magnitudes measuring between 5.5 to 7 hit Haiti in mid-January 2010, leaving 300, 000 people dead in one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history.
