Islamabad, 8 October 2023 (dpa/MIA) - Some 2,000 people have died after several strong earthquakes shook western Afghanistan on Saturday, a spokesman for the Taliban government told dpa as rescuers searched rubble for survivors the following day.

"The number of wounded people is very high," Abdul Wahid Rayan, an official at the Ministry of Information and Culture, said.

The UN emergency agency OCHA had put the death toll at more than 100 on Saturday, saying it expected the figure to rise as scores of people were trapped under collapsed buildings.

Several villages in the hard-hit border province of Herat have been completely destroyed, authorities said. According to the WHO, about 4,200 people were affected and at least 600 houses destroyed.

The largest hospital in the provincial capital of Herat alone had received nearly 200 dead and around 700 injured, according to medical sources.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his dismay and condolences to the bereaved families of the victims, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in New York. Guterres called on the international community to support the Afghan people affected by the earthquake, especially in view of the coming winter.

Meanwhile, Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary shared videos of the rescue work among completely ruined houses on the platform X, formerly Twitter. "The serene beauty of Herat has been destroyed by a merciless earthquake that has reduced entire villages to rubble," Sarwary wrote.

At least eight quakes shook the border region near Iran within a short period of time on Saturday morning. The US Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors seismic activity, put the magnitude at values between 4.6 and 6.3. The tremors occurred towards the border north-west of Herat, at a shallow depth of around 10 kilometres.

The tremors were also felt in neighbouring Iran. Residents of Mashhad in Iran, a city with over 1 million inhabitants located about 300 kilometres from the earthquake zone, reported that the walls of their houses were shaking.

Severe earthquakes occur repeatedly in the region where the Arabian, Indian and Eurasian plates meet. A devastating quake killed more than 1,000 people in Afghanistan in 2022. After several decades of conflict, many houses are poorly built. Earthquakes therefore often cause major damage.

Photo: MIA archive