Deadly earthquake hits Afghanistan

Powerful earthquakes struck northwestern Afghanistan on October 8, killing more than 2,400 people, the Taliban administration said, in the deadliest tremors to rock the mountainous country in years.

The quakes hit 35 km (20 miles) northwest of the city of Herat, one with a magnitude of 6.3, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.

They were among the world's deadliest quakes this year, after tremors in Turkey and Syria killed an estimated 50,000 people in February.

Houses were reduced to rubble, and many people rushed to hospital to receive first aid, photographs on Afghan media showed.

Afghanistan’s vulnerable buildings

Afghanistan is especially vulnerable to earthquakes as the entire country is located on two major active faults that have the potential to rupture and cause extensive damage.

Most homes in Afghanistan lack a good foundation and are often poorly constructed, according to a 2021 paper published in the Journal of Disaster Risk Studies.

Structures are either made of burnt bricks with cement mortar or are sun-dried brick masonry buildings with load bearing walls. The thickness of the walls ranges from 20 to 30 cm for the burnt bricks and about 40 cm to 80 cm for the sun-dried brick structures. These homes can be covered by large and often heavy roofs that can cave into the structure, making them extremely vulnerable to seismic activity, according to the report.

The central Asian country was rocked by its most deadly earthquake since June 2022.

Some areas near the epicentre of the quake experienced very strong shaking, which measured a 7 on the USGS Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale.

LandScan, a tool to estimate population in an area, showed that almost two million people live in the areas that experienced moderate to very strong shaking.

In 2015, a major earthquake struck the remote Afghan northeast, killing several hundred people in both Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.

The magnitude of the recent earthquake was less than the one in 2015, but it still caused widespread destruction.

Magnitude measures the size of the seismic waves generated by an earthquake and not the strength. The scale is logarithmic, meaning a whole number increase in magnitude represents a 10-fold jump in the size of the earthquake.

For example, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 is ten times larger than a magnitude 6 earthquake. The actual energy released increases even more rapidly with magnitude. The difference between a magnitude 7 and 6 quake is nearly 32 times stronger in terms of actual energy released.

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

The earthquake occurred in an area that historically has not experienced as many massive earthquakes. The majority of the country’s earthquakes occur in an area northeast of Kabul.

Photos and video footage showed multiple people sifting and digging through rubble searching for victims as hundreds of homes were destroyed. Rescue operations are scant as authorities are using near-obsolete helicopters to airlift victims out of the affected area.

Poor communications and a lack of proper roads are hampering relief efforts in a country already grappling with a humanitarian crisis which has deteriorated since the Taliban took over last August.

Damage to Herat

The medieval minarets of Herat sustained some damage, photographs on social media showed, with cracks visible and tiles fallen.

Death tolls often rise when information comes in from more remote parts of a country where decades of war have left infrastructure in a shambles, and relief and rescue operations are difficult to organise.

Afghanistan's healthcare system, reliant almost entirely on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and much international assistance, which had formed the backbone of the economy, was halted.

Diplomats and aid officials say concerns over Taliban restrictions on women and competing global humanitarian crises are causing donors to pull back on financial support. The Islamist government has ordered most Afghan female aid staff not to work, although with exemptions in health and education.

In August, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was likely to end its financial support for 25 Afghan hospitals because of funding constraints.

There are a total of 202 public health facilities in Herat province, one of which is the major regional hospital where 500 casualties had been taken, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report on Sunday.

A vast majority of the facilities are smaller basic health centers and logistical challenges were hindering operations, particularly in remote areas, the WHO said.