News: Massive earthquake hits Afghanistan, deaths reported across South Asia

A powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck northern Afghanistan on Monday, with massive tremors felt across Pakistan and India, leaving scores dead and hundreds more injured across the region.

The total death toll stood at about 172 with at least 132 people killed in Pakistan and at least 40 more in Afghanistan, according to official reports from the two countries.

The death toll could climb in coming days because communications were down in much of the rugged Hindu Kush mountain range area where the quake was centered.

The U.S. Geological Survey put the epicenter near Jarm in Afghanistan’s northeast province of Badakhshan, 150 miles from the capital Kabul, but the effects were immediately being felt in India and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, ordered troops to the quake-affected areas, the military said in a statement.

In one of the worst incidents in Afghanistan, 12 girls were killed in a stampede while trying to escape from their school in the north Afghan city of Taloqan.

“They fell under the feet of other students,” said Abdul Razaq Zinda, provincial head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency, who reported heavy damage in Takhar.

Power was cut across much of the Afghan capital, where tremors were felt for around 45 seconds. Houses shook, walls cracked and cars rolled in the street. Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah called an emergency meeting of the disaster management authority to assess the damage, his senior adviser Omar Samad tweeted.

Hikmat Fasi, a resident of Parwan Province in northern Afghanistan, said the quake caused a lot of damage in the area. “We are safe but I saw a lot of buildings collapse,” Fasi said. “It caused severe damage to our area. We are just praying.”

Strong tremors were felt in New Delhi and Islamabad, residents told Al Jazeera. In the Pakistani capital, walls swayed back and forth and people poured out of office buildings in a panic.

International aid agencies working in the northern areas of Afghanistan reported that cell phone coverage in the affected areas remained down in the hour after the initial quake.

In Islamabad, buildings shook and people poured into the streets in a panic, with many reciting verses from the Quran.

“I was praying when the massive earthquake rattled my home. I came out in a panic,” said Munir Anwar, a resident of Liaquat Pur in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province.

Shaukat Iqbal, a resident from Charsadda district in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province said it felt as if the earthquake “kept getting worse with time.”

India’s northernmost region of Kashmir experienced intense and prolonged tremors that caused panic in areas that suffered severe flooding last year. Power supplies and most mobile networks were knocked out, and there was structural damage to roads and buildings.

No casualties were reported in Indian Kashmir, however. The earthquake struck almost exactly six months after Nepal suffered its worst recorded earthquake, on April 25. Including the toll from a major aftershock in May, 9,000 people lost their lives and 900,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in that disaster.

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