A powerful 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck near Mazar-e-Sharif early on Monday, leaving at least 20 people dead and 320 injured, and prompting urgent rescue efforts across the affected areas.
The US Geological Survey said the quake hit at a depth of 28km (17.4 miles) near Mazar-e Sharif, which has a population of about 523,000.
"A total of 150 people injured and seven martyred have been reported and transferred to health centres as of this morning," said Samim Joyanda, the spokesperson for the health department in Samangan, a mountainous northern province near Mazar-e-Sharif, told Reuters.
The toll was based on hospital reports collected as of Monday morning, he said.
The USGS issued an orange alert in its PAGER system, which is an automated system that produces information on the impact of earthquakes, and indicated that "significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread".
Past events with this alert level have required a regional or national level response, the system's alert added.
The earthquake destroyed part of the holy shrine of Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh province spokesperson Haji Zaid said, referring to the Blue Mosque.
The country's national disaster management agency said reports on casualties and damage would be shared later. Reuters could not immediately verify the extent of damage from the earthquake.
Videos of rescue efforts being carried out to save people trapped under rubble and images of fallen debris in buildings were shared on the social media platform X. One video showed rescuers pulling what appeared to be dead bodies from rubble.
Reuters could not immediately verify the footage and the images.
A powerful earthquake of magnitude 6 struck northeastern Afghanistan on August 31. Dozens of aftershocks followed, according to the USGS.
Thousands of people were killed and thousands more injured, the Taliban administration said in September.
The quakes hit near the eastern city of Jalalabad, among the five largest cities in Afghanistan, and the capital of Nangarhar province.
The first quake on August 31 was one of Afghanistan’s worst in years, flattening houses in remote villages.
Afghanistan is especially vulnerable to earthquakes as the country is located on two major active faults that have the potential to rupture and cause extensive damage.
Most homes in Afghanistan lack a solid 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 may collapse into the structure, making them extremely vulnerable to seismic activity, according to the report.
Some homes partially damaged by the first quake were destroyed by the second, according to residents. More than 5,400 houses have been destroyed, according to Taliban administration spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.
In 2015, a major earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan. Another in 2023 killed at least 1,000 people.
The magnitude of the recent earthquake was less than both of those quakes, but it still caused widespread destruction.
Magnitude measures the size of seismic waves generated by an earthquake, not its 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. A magnitude 7 quake is nearly 32 times stronger than a magnitude 6 quake in terms of energy released.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. The eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar were worst hit in the recent quakes.