A 6.3 magnitude earthquake Wednesday struck western Afghanistan, impacting an area already suffering from a devastating loss of over 2,000 lives during a series of similar quakes last weekend.
The jolts, which took place at a shallow depth around 05:10 am local time, had its epicentre located approximately 29 kilometres towards the north of the country’s Herat province, AFP reported quoting the United States Geological Survey.
Rescue teams and volunteers have been working on the ground since Saturday to locate the quake’s survivors, which shook the province earlier, demolishing entire villages and affecting 12,000 people, the United Nations (UN) estimated.
Local and national officials have given conflicting counts of the number of dead and injured from the previous earthquakes, but the disaster ministry has said 2,053 people died.
“We can’t give exact numbers for dead and wounded as it is in flux,” said disaster management ministry spokesman Mullah Janan Sayeq.
