DPA
Islamabad
Another strong earthquake struck western afghanistan on Sunday morning, in the same area where a series of powerful tremors last weekend left some 2,400 people dead.
So far, at least two dead people and 154 wounded victims have been taken to the main hospital in the region, according to hospital sources.
A local official said the figures are expected to change as hospitals were waiting for more victims from the remote areas.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors seismic activity, put the magnitude of the latest quake with several aftershocks at 6.3.
It struck at 0336 GMT near the western city of Herat, close to the epicentre of the October 7 disaster, at a shallow depth of about 6.3 kilometres.
“People are spending cold nights inside tents,” a resident of Herat told DPA. “The majority of people are terrified. They are thinking about their lives.”
On October 7, a series of quakes with magnitudes of between 4.6 and 6.3 had shaken the same area at a depth of around 10 kilometres, killing around 2,400 people and completely flattening at least 20 villages, according to the latest figures by the Taliban-run government.
More than 90 percent of those killed in the devastating earthquakes are women and children, according to the United Nations.
More than 19,000 people are directly affected, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
