Earthquake shakes Afghan border

A powerful earthquake jolted the remote Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistan’s northeast border with Pakistan early today.

Reports said at least one person was dead, and probably more.

“There are casualties, but we are still trying to sort out the details,” the head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, Qarabig Ezedyar said.

A woman was crushed to death when a wall collapsed in Badakhshan’s Shahri Buzurg district, local police chief Abdul Musbah said.

Officials said they feared for isolated communities of flimsy mud houses deep in the region’s inaccessible valleys.

The quake was centred in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, which also borders Tajikistan and China, and caused panic even in the capital, Kabul, 175 miles to the southwest.

The quake was also felt in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and as far east as Lahore, near Pakistan’s border with India.

The US Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.6, while Pakistan’s Seismological Centre, based in the northwestern city of Peshawar, put the magnitude at 6.8.

An earthquake in May, 1998, was of magnitude 6.9 and also claimed victims in neighbouring Tajikistan.

Another quake killed some 1,000 in northern Afghanistan in March 2002.