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KABUL - At least 920 people were killed and hundreds more injured after a 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Afghanistan, an official said.

The quake struck early Wednesday about 28 miles southwest of the city of Khost, a provincial capital, the United States Geological Survey said.

Earthquake in Afghanistan Kills at Least 920 People, Official Says.
The 5.9-magnitude quake struck about 28 miles southwest of the city of Khost, in the country’s southeast.

The quake struck early Wednesday about 28 miles southwest of the city of Khost, a provincial capital in the country’s southeast, the United States Geological Survey said, and it had a depth of about six miles.

The death toll of 920 was reported by Sharafuddin Muslim, the deputy minister of disaster management, at a news briefing in Kabul.

The Bakhtar news agency posted video footage on Twitter of a helicopter landing in what it said was a quake-hit area. It said that ambulances were transporting the injured to hospitals.

Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, a deputy special representative for Afghanistan for the United Nations, wrote on Twitter that the organization was assessing the needs and responding in the aftermath of the earthquake. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on Twitter that the agency would “continue supporting people in need across the country.”

The quake struck about 300 miles north-northeast of the site of a deadly 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan in 2008, the U.S.G.S. said.

The earthquake was felt in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and across the northern part of neighbouring Pakistan, according to a map that the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre posted on its website. The U.S.G.S. said that a second quake, of 4.5 magnitude, struck about 30 miles southwest of Khost about an hour later.

Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif of Pakistan said he was “deeply grieved” to learn about the earthquake. In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said that it was working to provide help to Afghanistan. “The people of Pakistan stand in strong solidarity with their Afghan brethren in this difficult time,” the statement said.

For civilians in Afghanistan, earthquakes are yet another risk in a country traumatized by decades of war. Many of the country’s densely populated towns and cities sit on or near several geological faults, some of which can produce earthquakes of up to 7 in magnitude.

The earthquake on Wednesday, according to the U.S.G.S. appeared to originate from movement between the India and Eurasia tectonic plates.

The agency said in a 2022 report that more than 7,000 people had died in the past decade because of earthquakes, an average of 560 people a year. In one area between Kabul and Jalalabad, it estimated that an earthquake of 7.6 would affect seven million people.

In January, two earthquakes struck a remote, mountainous area of western Afghanistan, killing at least 27 people and destroying hundreds of homes, officials said at the time. Another earthquake in 2015 killed more than 300 people in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan and destroyed thousands of homes.