- ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - About
50 people are feared dead and 100 are missing in two remote northern Afghan
villages after a powerful earthquake triggered landslides, according to
a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Programme.
-
- "Two villages located between two mountains were
badly affected by a serious landslide," WFP spokesman Khaled Mansour
told Reuters on Monday.
-
- "According to local authorities, they are claiming
about 50 people were killed and 100 others missing under the
rubble."
-
- The villages are located in the Takhdi Rustum area of
northern Samangan province.
-
- The powerful earthquake, measuring 7.2 on the Richter
scale, struck Afghanistan's Hindu Kush mountains on Sunday afternoon,
affecting
an area stretching from Tajikistan to India.
-
- By late Sunday, the quake was known to have left at least
five people dead in Kabul and dozens injured in Afghanistan and parts of
northern Pakistan. Local officials in Kabul said on Monday at least 80
houses were destroyed.
-
- There are also unconfirmed reports of two dead and seven
injured in northeastern Badakhshan province, a U.N. official told Reuters
on Monday.
-
- Mansour said the WFP was refuelling two helicopters in
the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif for a mission to confirm the
scale of the damage to the quake-hit villages in Samangan.
-
- "We loaded about 22 tonnes of food onto a couple
of trucks and will send them as far as they can go," Mansour
said.
-
- "If helicopters can confirm the situation they will
send back for more (food) assistance or other helicopters."
-
- U.N. officials in Afghanistan said on Monday it would
take several days before a clearer picture of the quake's impact emerged
because of the remoteness of many of the affected areas.
-
- REMOTE AREA
-
- "We are still trying to assess the situation.
Information
is always slow in coming out because of the remoteness of the area,"
U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told Reuters from Kabul.
-
- "We have also received preliminary reports of damage
in Samangan province and in Rostaq town in Takhar province," she said,
adding she was not aware of any confirmed deaths in those areas.
-
- The U.S. Geological Survey said on Sunday the quake's
epicentre was 45 miles (75 km) south-southwest of Faizabad, in Badakhshan
province, and 150 miles (240 km) north-northeast of Kabul.
-
- A U.N. official contacted in Faizabad on Monday said
there were unconfirmed reports of two people dead, seven injured and 22
houses destroyed in Jurm district in southeast Badakhshan province.
-
- Paola Emerson, of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan, told Reuters from Faizabad there
were no reports of damage in the city.
-
- But she said she had been in contact with provincial
officials and some of the villages likely to be affected were two to three
hours walk from district towns.
-
- Earthquakes are relatively frequent in the Hindu Kush
mountain range. Another tremor of similar strength struck northern
Afghanistan
on January 3, but caused no significant damage.
-
- In 1998, two earthquakes killed about 8,500 people and
destroyed tens of thousands of houses in Takhar and Badakhshan
provinces.
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