Earthquake in Afghanistan Kills at Least 13, Nine of Them in Pakistan

People come out of a restaurant after a tremor was felt in Lahore, Pakistan March 21, 2023. (Reuters)
People come out of a restaurant after a tremor was felt in Lahore, Pakistan March 21, 2023. (Reuters)
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Earthquake in Afghanistan Kills at Least 13, Nine of Them in Pakistan

People come out of a restaurant after a tremor was felt in Lahore, Pakistan March 21, 2023. (Reuters)
People come out of a restaurant after a tremor was felt in Lahore, Pakistan March 21, 2023. (Reuters)

At least 13 people were killed and more than 90 injured in Pakistan and Afghanistan after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck late on Tuesday, government officials said.

At least nine people were killed and 44 injured in northwest Pakistan, a Pakistani government official said, and hospitals in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were put into a state of emergency overnight.

At least four people were killed and 50 injured in Afghanistan, a health ministry official there said.

Houses and buildings in both countries were also damaged, authorities said.

The quake was felt over an area more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) wide by some 285 million people in Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Center said.

The epicenter was in the Hindu Kush mountains, in the sparsely populated northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, 40km southeast of Jurm village, at the considerable depth of 187km, the US Geological Survey said.

In Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province senior provincial official Abdul Basit said that addition to the dead and injured, at least 19 houses were damaged.

Shafiullah Rahimi, a spokesperson for Afghanistan's disaster mitigation ministry, said late on Tuesday that two people had been killed in the eastern province of Laghman.

Large parts of South Asia are seismically active because a tectonic plate known as the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.

A 6.1 magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed more than 1,000 people last year.

In 2005, at least 73,000 people were killed by a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck northern Pakistan.



At Least 11 Dead after Security Operations Against Militants in Northwest Pakistan

Pakistani security officials inspect the scene where a train was hijacked by suspected militants, in Sibi, Pakistan, 15 March 2025. EPA/STRINGER
Pakistani security officials inspect the scene where a train was hijacked by suspected militants, in Sibi, Pakistan, 15 March 2025. EPA/STRINGER
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At Least 11 Dead after Security Operations Against Militants in Northwest Pakistan

Pakistani security officials inspect the scene where a train was hijacked by suspected militants, in Sibi, Pakistan, 15 March 2025. EPA/STRINGER
Pakistani security officials inspect the scene where a train was hijacked by suspected militants, in Sibi, Pakistan, 15 March 2025. EPA/STRINGER

Pakistan's security forces raided two militant hideouts in the country’s restive northwest on Saturday, triggering gun battles that left at least two soldiers and nine militants dead, the military said in a statement.
The raids were conducted in the Mohmand and Dera Ismail Khan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported.
According to local police officials, the insurgents were Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP.
The outlawed TTP is a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and NATO troops were in the final stages of a withdrawal from the country after 20 years of war.
Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuaries and have even been living openly in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, which also emboldened the Pakistani Taliban.
In a separate incident on Saturday, insurgents ambushed security forces in the northwestern Kurram district of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, local police said. However, authorities have yet to confirm any troop casualties.
Pakistan's military is currently engaged in an ongoing operation in Kurram, an area that has witnessed years of sectarian violence. Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes between heavily armed factions, exacerbating tensions in the region.
Since November, Kurram has remained isolated after authorities blocked key roads following sectarian violence. The closure has led to severe shortages of medicine and food, further deepening the humanitarian crisis.
Also on Saturday, a bomb exploded outside a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing cleric Mufti Shakir, local police said. It was unclear who was behind the attack and an investigation is continuing.