Strong quake kills more than a dozen in Pakistan, Afghanistan

More than a dozen people have been killed and scores more injured after a strong magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled the Hindu Kush mountain range stretching along northern parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The earthquake struck late on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and injuring 44 in northwest Pakistan. At least four people were killed and 50 were injured in Afghanistan.

The earthquake’s epicenter was 40 km southeast of the town of Jurm in Badakhshan Province in northeastern Afghanistan and had a depth of 187 km.

The strong quake was felt over an area more than 1,000 km wide by hundreds of millions of people not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also, in India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan.

Large parts of Asia are seismically active due to the tectonic plate known as the Indian plate pushing north into the Eurasian plate.

Last year, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in eastern Afghanistan killed more than 1,000 people.

At least 73,000 people were killed by a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck northern Pakistan in 2005.