Another Strong Quake Strikes Western Afghanistan

A strong earthquake rattled Afghanistan's western province of Herat on Wednesday, following a series of deadly quakes on Saturday.

There were no details on casualties so far, but provincial officials said hundreds of homes had been destroyed. The office of Herat's governor said some areas had suffered "huge losses", without giving details.

"Mobile medical teams and officials have been working together and have transferred several injured people to hospital," the governor's office said in a statement.

Saturday's tremors killed at least 2,400 people and injured more than 2,000, the Taliban-run government said, making the quakes one of the deadliest in the world so far this year.

Most of the casualties in that quake were women and children, the World Health Organization said.

The German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said the latest quake was a magnitude 6.3 and occurred at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles).

Hemmed in by mountains, Afghanistan has a history of strong earthquakes, many in the rugged Hindu Kush region bordering Pakistan. Herat province borders Iran, which said it would send humanitarian aid.

There were no casualties reported so far, he said, as many villagers were already sleeping out in the open or in tents since the earlier earthquakes.

"People need urgent aid," Governor Noor Ahmad Shahab said, adding that survivors were falling ill from the colder autumn weather.

Relief and rescue efforts after Saturday's earthquakes have been hampered by infrastructure left crumbling by decades of war and a lack of foreign aid which once formed the backbone of the economy, but which has dried up since the Taliban took over.

Reporting by Reuters