Rescue workers have recovered 20 bodies from the rubble of homes destroyed in Afghanistan’s 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which also left hundreds injured.
The earthquake struck near Mazar-e-Sharif, one of the country’s largest cities and home to about 500,000 people, at around 01:00 local time.
The Taliban Health Ministry on Monday, said 320 people were injured, while ministry spokesperson Sharfat Zaman warned that the number of dead and injured could rise.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued an orange alert on its earthquake impact system, indicating that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread.”
Mazar-e-Sharif is Afghanistan’s fifth-largest city, with a population of about 523,000.
Located on two major active fault lines, Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. More than 1,400 people were killed and at least 3,250 injured after a 6.0-magnitude quake struck the country’s eastern regions in September.
That tremor wiped out villages in the Mazar Dara Valley, which Sky’s Asia correspondent Cordelia Lynch visited in October.
In 2015, another earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
