Earthquake kills five in south

At least five people have been killed and six injured, when an earthquake struck Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan on Sunday, a defence ministry spokesman said. "The quake hit the Shinkai district of the [southern] Zabul province, damaging dozens of mud-build houses," Gen Mohammad Zahir Azimi said on Monday in the capital, Kabul. He said details from the area were sketchy and it was not known exactly what time the quake struck. War-shattered Afghanistan does not have a seismologic agency to provide information on earthquakes. Originally he said the affected area was in Paktika, but later contacted IRIN to say it was in Zabul - both provinces bordering Pakistan. "Our national army units are in the region helping villagers," Azimi added, noting six villages had been damaged by the tremor. His comments came after a strong aftershock measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale hit northern Pakistan and border areas of Afghanistan on Sunday. A massive earthquake hit northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan on 8 October, killing over 50,000 people and leaving upwards of a million in immediate need of relief aid. Pakistan's Seismological Centre in the northern city of Peshawar said two quakes were registered along the border area in the north of the country early Sunday. One was just after midnight local time, while the other struck at dawn. Provincial officials in Zabul said they had no information about casualties. "There are no casualties in the quake-affected areas, but residents there are in dire need for assistance," Gulab Shah Alikheel, a spokesman for Zabul's governor said, adding the quake had hit the Seuorei area of the Shinkai district. "Our teams are assessing the damage on the ground, around 80 mud-built houses have been damaged in the area," he maintained, noting they were collecting assistance for the quake-affected areas. Around 200 tents and 400 blankets have been dispatched to affected areas in Zabul province, Abdurahim Zareen, a public information officer at the Ministry for Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD), said. The US-led Coalition in Afghanistan has several bases in Zabul province and Cindy Moore, a Coalition spokesman, said that they had no reports of casualties among Coalition forces in the area. Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on a tour of quake-hit parts of Pakistan, donated about 3.5 mt of medicine to quake survivors. Also, a medical team made up of 30 doctors, nurses and pharmacists has been dispatched to quake-ravaged areas in Pakistan, according to Dr. Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the Afghan health ministry. The last major quake to hit Afghanistan was in March 2002. It struck the northwest province of Badakhshan, killing nearly 2,000 people.