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.



Iran’s President Criticizes US, West for Supporting Israel, Vows More ‘Severe Responses’

Smoke billows following an explosion in central Tehran on June 15, 2025. (AFP)
Smoke billows following an explosion in central Tehran on June 15, 2025. (AFP)
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Iran’s President Criticizes US, West for Supporting Israel, Vows More ‘Severe Responses’

Smoke billows following an explosion in central Tehran on June 15, 2025. (AFP)
Smoke billows following an explosion in central Tehran on June 15, 2025. (AFP)

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian criticized the United States and some Western countries for supporting Israel's attacks on Iran.

He said that if Israeli attacks continue, Iran's responses "will be more decisive and severe.”

Pezeshkian said that Israel "is not capable of any action without the permission of the US” and that “what we are witnessing today is being done with the direct support of Washington.”

In a report carried on state TV, Pezeshkian said that Iran has never sought war and conflict. “However, just as our armed forces, including the powerful army and Revolutionary Guard, have so far provided appropriate and firm responses, in case of continued hostile actions, the responses will be more decisive and severe.”

Israeli strikes in Iran have killed at least 406 people and wounded another 654, a human rights group said Sunday.

The Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said its figures covered the entirety of Iran.

Iran’s government has not offered any overall casualty figures from Israeli attacks that have decimated its military leadership and targeted its nuclear sites. Individual officials have offered piecemeal figures.

Iran on Sunday said an Israeli strike that killed the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s missile program also took out seven of his trusted deputies, seriously disrupting its command.

Iran previously acknowledged the death of Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guard’s aerospace division in Friday's strike.

Also killed were Gen. Mahmoud Bagheri, Gen. Davoud Sheikhian, Gen. Mohammad Bagher Taherpour, Gen. Mansour Safarpour, Gen. Masoud Tayyeb, Gen. Khosro Hasani and Gen. Javad Jarsara, the Guard said Sunday.

The Guard did not elaborate on why the men had gathered in one place.