ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered support to Afghanistan on Monday as it reels from one of its deadliest earthquakes, which officials say have killed over 800 people and wounded more than 2,500.
The magnitude 6 earthquake killed at least 800 people and injured over 2,500 in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar when it took place on Sunday night, Afghan government spokesman Mawlawi Zabihullah Mujahid said. The jolts were felt in several areas of northwestern Pakistan on Sunday night, including the country’s capital Islamabad. However, Pakistan did not report any loss of lives from the calamity.
“On behalf of the people and government of Pakistan, I extend my heartfelt condolences & prayers to the bereaved families,” Sharif wrote on social media platform X. “We stand in solidarity with our Afghan brothers & sisters in this hour of grief, and we are ready to extend all possible support in this regard.”
The earthquake leveled homes of mud and stone in Afghanistan’s areas bordering Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The quake was Afghanistan’s deadliest since June 2022, when tremors of magnitude 6.1 killed at least 1,000 people in the country.
The devastation also prompted UN Secretary General António Guterres to offer support to Afghanistan.
“The UN team in Afghanistan is mobilized and will spare no effort to assist those in need in the affected areas,” Guterres wrote on X.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
A series of earthquakes in its western region killed more than 1,000 people last year, underscoring the vulnerability of one of the world’s poorest countries to natural disasters.
There are fears that the disaster will further stretch the resources of the country, which is already grappling with humanitarian crises, from a sharp drop in aid to a huge pushback of its citizens from neighboring countries Pakistan and Iran.
