At least one person has died and 120 have been injured after a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, followed by four aftershocks of between 5.4 and 4.4, that hit western Afghanistan this Sunday, the WHO reported in an area where more than a thousand people have died as a result of a series of seismic movements that began last week.
“A 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan's Herat province again this morning. So far, more than 120 injured people have been brought to the Herat regional hospital, and many others have been taken to other hospitals in the city,” the WHO said on the social network X, formerly Twitter.
The organization, whose teams work alongside hospital staff in Herat, has shared images of patients receiving medical treatment outside the hospital.
The spokesman for the governor of Herat province, Nisar Ahmad Elyas, has confirmed that at least one person has died during the earthquakes this Sunday.
The Bhaktar agency, the official media of the interim Taliban government, has raised the number of fatalities to two and has warned that this number “could probably increase” in the coming hours.
A first earthquake of magnitude 6.5 was recorded in the province of Herat around 08:00 local time (05:30 peninsular time), at a depth of 6.3 kilometers and about 30 kilometers north of the capital, according to the USGS.
Half an hour later, a second earthquake of magnitude 5.4 again hit the province about 10 kilometers north of Herat.. The province has recorded a total of four aftershocks, the last of them measuring 4.4 at 12:34 local time (10:04 peninsular time).
This Afghan region was shaken last Saturday by several earthquakes of up to 6.3 magnitude, and successive aftershocks of considerable intensity that left some 20 villages destroyed.
Although the interim Taliban government initially estimated more than 2,400 dead and 2,000 injured, the Ministry of Disaster Management this week lowered the death toll to around a thousand.
The weak structure of the Taliban's de facto government and the disorganization of the agencies have complicated the rescue and distribution of humanitarian aid tasks, with many residents of Herat camped outdoors for fear of new aftershocks and with limited access to sources of food. running water or food.