At least seven people have died after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Afghanistan, local officials have said.
The tremor was recorded near the city of Mazar-e Sharif, in the northern Balkh province, at around 12.59am on Monday (8.29pm in the UK).
Samim Joyanda, the spokesperson for the health department in Samangan province, near the city, told Reuters that a further 150 people were injured.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) has issued an orange alert on its system of quake impacts, and suggested that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread”.
Previous events at that alert level have required a regional or national level response, according to the USGS’s alert system.
Balkh province spokesperson Haji Zaid added that the earthquake destroyed part of the city’s holy shrine, known as the Blue Mosque.
Mazar-e Sharif is the fifth-largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of around 523,000.
Located on two major active fault lines, Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes: More than 1,400 people were killed and at least 3,250 others injured after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit the country’s eastern regions in September.
That tremor wiped out villages in the Mazar Dara valley, which Sky’s Asia correspondent Cordelia Lynch visited in October.
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In 2015, an earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.
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Four large earthquakes also struck in the Herat province in 2023, each magnitude 6.3. The Taliban said at the time that at least 2,445 people had died.
