KABUL: A strong earthquake rocked eastern Afghanistan including the capital Kabul on Friday, AFP journalists and residents said.
The 5.8-magnitude quake struck a mountainous area around 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Kabul, the United States Geological Survey said.
The epicenter was near several remote villages and struck at 5:39 p.m. (1309 GMT), just as people in the Muslim-majority country were sitting down to break their Ramadan fast.
“We were waiting to do our iftars, a heavy earthquake shook us. It was very strong, it went on for almost 30 seconds,” said Zilgay Talabi, a resident of Khenj district near of the epicenter.
“Everyone was horrified and scared,” Talabi told AFP, saying he feared “landslides and avalanches” may follow.
Power was briefly cut in parts of the capital, while east of Kabul an AFP journalist in Nangarhar province also felt it.
Earthquakes are common in Afghanistan, particularly along the Hindu Kush mountain range, near where the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates meet.
Haqmal Saad, spokesman for the Panjshir province police, described the quake as “very strong” and said the force was “gathering information on the ground.”
Mohibullah Jahid, head of Panjshir Natural Disaster Management agency, told AFP he was in touch with several officials in the area.
The district governor had told him there were reports of “minor damage, such as cracks in the walls, but we have not received anything serious, such as the collapse of houses or anything similar,” Jahid said.
Residents in Bamiyan and Wardak provinces, west of Kabul, told AFP they also felt the earthquake.
In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, rescue service official Bilal Ahmad Faizi said the quake was felt in border areas.
In August last year, a shallow 6.0-magnitude quake in the country’s east wiped out mountainside villages and killed more than 2,200 people.
Weeks later, a 6.3-magnitude quake in northern Afghanistan killed at least 27 people.
Large tremors in western Herat, near the Iranian border, in 2023, and in Nangarhar province in 2022, killed hundreds and destroyed thousands of homes.
Many homes in the predominantly rural country, which has been devastated by decades of war, are shoddily built.
Poor communication networks and infrastructure in mountainous Afghanistan have hampered disaster responses in the past, preventing authorities from reaching far-flung villages for hours or even days before they could assess the extent of the damage.