More than 2,000 people died, and thousands of others were injured in the deadliest tremors in years in Afghanistan's northwest, the Taliban administration said Sunday, as rescue workers scrambled to pull out an unknown number of people trapped under rubble.
Amid the confusion, the death toll from Saturday's massive quakes spiked from 500 reported on Sunday morning by a Red Crescent spokesperson and 16 from Saturday night.
Afghanistan Disaster Management Authority’s spokesman Mullah Janan Saiq said 2,053 people were dead, 9,240 injured and 1,329 houses damaged or destroyed.
Earlier, he said the death toll could further rise, adding the earthquakes caused heavy damage in northwestern Herat and Badghis provinces.
State-run Bakhtar News Agency, citing Afghan Red Cresent, reported that some 12 villages in the Zinda Jan and Ghorian districts of Herat province - home to 1.9 million people - have been "completely destroyed."
Rescue teams along with local men are struggling to pull out the dead and injured trapped under the razed houses.
More than 200 dead had been brought to different hospitals, a Herat health department official who identified himself as Dr Danish said, adding most of them were women and children.
Bodies had been "taken to several places - military bases, hospitals," Danish said.
"The number of wounded people is very high," Abdul Wahid Rayan, an official at the Ministry of Information and Culture, said.
The U.N. emergency agency OCHA had put the death toll at more than 100 on Saturday, saying it expected the figure to rise as scores of people were trapped under collapsed buildings.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his dismay and condolences to the bereaved families of the victims, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in New York. Guterres called on the international community to support the Afghan people affected by the earthquake, especially in view of the coming winter.
Several villages in the hard-hit border province of Herat have been completely destroyed, authorities said. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 4,200 people were affected and at least 600 houses destroyed.
The quakes caused panic in Herat, resident Naseema said on Saturday.
"People left their houses, we all are on the streets," she wrote in a text message to Reuters, adding that the city was feeling follow-on tremors.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), strong earthquakes of magnitude 5.5, 5.9, and 6.2 jolted the Herat and Badghis provinces of Afghanistan.
The tremors were also felt in neighbouring Iran. Residents of Mashhad in Iran, a city with over 1 million inhabitants located about 300 kilometres from the earthquake zone, reported that the walls of their houses were shaking.
Severe earthquakes occur repeatedly in the region where the Arabian, Indian and Eurasian plates meet. A devastating quake killed more than 1,000 people in Afghanistan in 2022. After several decades of conflict, many houses are poorly built. Earthquakes therefore often cause major damage.