Kabul assesses damage after earthquake

Residents of the Afghan capital Kabul assessed damage on Monday following Sunday's powerful earthquake measuring up to 7.2 on the Richter Scale. Unconfirmed reports suggest at least fifty people died throughout Afghanistan from the quake.

Authorities said about 40 houses were either destroyed or damaged, with one man dead when a wall collapsed on him. The United Nations received unconfirmed reports that 300 houses had been damaged or destroyed in Samangan Province in the north. These reports suggest that about 50 people were killed and 100 missing. No other details about the casualties were available.

"Look, my house is down," Sufi Abdullah, a Kabul resident whose family of 12 came out of the house unscathed moments before parts of it collapsed, told IRIN.

"I felt the ground swaying and buildings shaking, it was the most powerful quake I have ever experienced," said Abdul Latif, another Kabul resident whose house was also damaged.

The quake, which hit Sunday afternoon, caused buildings to sway and people to flee into the streets as far away as the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and the Indian capital, New Delhi , residents and officials said.

"We are assessing the situation now. We believe the damage in Kabul is fairly light, but we have received some reports that damage in the north is far greater," UN spokeswoman, Stephanie Bunker, told IRIN. "We are trying to confirm the reports from the provinces of Samangan and
Takhar [in the northeast]."

An official of the Seismological Centre in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar told IRIN that the earthquake was felt for four to five minutes. "It measured up to 6.7 on the international Richter Scale," he said. Earthquakes of such magnitude can cause widespread damage.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center said in a statement that the earthquake measured 7.2 on the Richter scale.

"This is a large, intermediate-depth earthquake. Typically, earthquakes of this type do not cause extreme damage, but are often felt over a very wide area," the USGS statement added. It went on to note that this had been the most significant earthquake in this general area since another magnitude 7.2 event on 30 December 1983.

The Pakistani Seismological official said the epicentre of the earthquake was in the Hindu Kush mountains bordering Afghanistan, at a point 250 km north of Peshawar.

International media reported that fragile mud houses in poor districts of Kabul and across the border near Peshawar had partially collapsed. One Peshawar hospital said it had treated around a dozen people for minor injuries.

Reuters news agency said that in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, 11 female students were injured, one of them critically, when a staircase at Allai Girls' School collapsed as they tried to flee the building. Business came to an abrupt halt in Kabul's main market, with vendors clinging to their goods as the ground heaved.