A 5.9 magnitude earthquake surprised the people of Pakistan while they were sleeping. There were injured and dead.
Islamabad – According to the authorities, at least 20 people were killed and around 300 others injured in an earthquake in southwest Pakistan.
In the hardest-hit Harnai district, hundreds of houses were destroyed and people trapped under rubble, said local administration chief Suhail Anwar. “We fear that the death toll could rise once our teams reach more remote areas,” said Anwar.
The quake had shaken the province of Baluchistan on the border with Iran in the early morning hours of Thursday, as the local interior ministry announced. It reached a magnitude of 5.9 and surprised many people while they were sleeping. The epicenter of the quake was about 100 kilometers west of the provincial capital Quetta, as the country’s meteorological office announced. The USGS based earthquake monitoring station put the magnitude of the quake at 5.7.
Panic and the search for survivors
According to the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), numerous people were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings. The exact extent of the damage and the exact number of victims are still unclear, said a spokesman for the authorities. Civilian rescue workers and the military have been dispatched to Harnai District. The rescue and recovery work was made more difficult by power outages in large parts of Baluchistan.
There were also several children among the dead, Anwar said. The at least 300 injured people are being treated in local hospitals, said a local authority representative.
Videos shared on social media show people running out of their homes in panic and screaming. There were reports that the tremors were also felt in the southern port city of Karachi and in the capital, Islamabad. The earthquake also triggered landslides in two places on the main road between Quetta and Harnai, the civil protection department said.
Army helicopters are also used in the rescue efforts to fly injured people from inaccessible mountain regions, said NDMA’s provincial head, Naseer Nasir. Seriously injured people would be transferred to large hospitals in the city of Quetta.
Severe earthquakes repeatedly occur in Pakistan and cause great damage. In October 2015, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India killed more than 400 people and left thousands more homeless. In October 2005, an earthquake measuring 7.6 in magnitude cost the lives of more than 86,000 people in Pakistan alone, and around 1,350 deaths in the Indian part of Kashmir. More than three million people lost their homes at the time. dpa
