Another powerful, magnitude 6.3 earthquake again struck northwestern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said.
The latest 6.3-magnitude earthquake was about 28 kilometers (17 miles) outside Herat, the capital of Herat province, and 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Two 6.3 magnitude earthquakes killed dozens of people in western Afghanistan on October 7, the country’s national disaster authority said. Taliban officials said more than 2,000 had died across Herat after the earlier quakes.
In June 2022, a powerful earthquake struck a rugged, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, flattening stone and mud-brick homes. The quake was Afghanistan’s deadliest in two decades, killing at least 1,000 people and injuring about 1,500.
Volunteers and rescuers have been working since Saturday in what are now last-ditch attempts to find survivors from the earlier series of earthquakes, which leveled entire villages and affected more than 12,000 people, according to UN estimates.
Local and national officials have given conflicting counts of the number of dead and injured from the previous earthquakes, but the disaster ministry has said 2,053 people died.