ISLAMABAD – A strong earthquake rattled eastern Pakistan Tuesday afternoon forcing residents into the street in several cities, with dozens wounded as witnesses also claimed a building collapsed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The epicentre of the shallow 5.8-magnitude was near the Kashmiri city of Mirpur, roughly 22 kilometres (14 miles) north of Jhelum in agricultural Punjab province, according to the US Geological Survey.
Mirpur, a city known for its palatial houses, has strong ties to Britain and the majority of its 450,000 residents carry both British and Pakistani passports. “The quake was 10 kilometres deep and was felt in most of Punjab province, some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The worst hit was Mirpur, Azad Kashmir,” Pakistan’s chief meteorologist Muhammad Riaz told AFP.
Pakistan’s military deployed “aviation and medical support” teams along with troops to affected areas in Kashmir, according to its spokesman. The prime minister of Pakistani Kashmir said at least 100 people were injured and being treated in a Mirpur hospital, adding that there were no reports of fatalities and relief efforts were ongoing. However, others gave conflicting tolls.
“More than 70 people have been wounded and at least three killed in the earthquake,” Saeedur Rehman Qureshi, an official from the State Disaster Management Authority, told AFP. Naeem Chughtai, a Mirpur resident living near the city’s main hospital, told AFP that at least one 10-year-old girl had been killed. He also said the area’s infrastructure — including roads, mobile phone towers, and electricity poles — had been badly damaged by the quake.
Witnesses Sajjad Jarral and Qazi Tahir, who spoke to AFP by telephone from Mirpur, said the quake had caused a building to collapse and inflicted heavy damage on at least one road. Local media aired images showing a damaged major road where multiple vehicles could be seen trapped in large cracks. Tremors were felt as far as New Delhi, with the Press Trust of India reporting that panicked people rushed out of their homes and offices in several places, including in Rajasthan, Punjab, and Haryana.
“The earthquake was felt but there are no reports of any damage,” Amir Ali from the disaster management department in Indian-administered Kashmir told AFP. Pakistan straddles part of the boundary where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, making the country susceptible to earthquakes.
In October 2015, a 7.5-magnitude quake in Pakistan and Afghanistan killed almost 400 people, flattening buildings in rugged terrain that impeded relief efforts. The country was also hit by a 7.6-magnitude quake on October 8, 2005, that killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless, mainly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. AFP/RSS
