Earthquake in Afghanistan's Paktika leaves over 900 dead, 600 wounded

Taliban officials say over 900 people have been killed after a powerful earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale hit Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province.

Sharafuddin Muslim, the deputy minister for disaster management, told a news conference that at least 920 people had been killed and a 600 more were injured.

Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said hundreds of houses were destroyed and the death toll was likely to rise.

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A doctor told the BBC that the casualties so far were in the Gayan and Barmal districts in Paktika. A local news outlet reported that an entire village in Gayan was wiped out.

The quake struck about 44km from the south-eastern city of Khost shortly after 01:30 local time, when many people were at home, asleep in their beds. Tremors were felt across more than 500km of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Afghanistan is prone to quakes, as it's located in a tectonically active region. According to the United Nations data, 7,000 people have bee killed in earthquakes in the country in the past 10 years, which comes to an average of 560 deaths a year from earthquakens.