Kabul: More than 2,400 people were killed in earthquakes in Afghanistan, the Taliban administration said on Sunday, in the deadliest tremors to rock the quake-prone mountainous country in years. The Saturday quakes in the west of the country hit 35 km (20 miles) northwest of the city of Herat, with one of 6.3 magnitude, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.
They were among the world's deadliest quakes this year, after tremors in Turkey and Syria killed an estimated 50,000 in February.
Janan Sayeeq, spokesman for the Ministry of Disasters, said that the toll had risen to 2,445 dead, but he revised down the number of injured to "more than 2,000". Earlier, he had said that 9,240 people had been injured.
Sayeeq also said 1,320 houses had been damaged or destroyed. The death count spiked from 500 reported earlier on Sunday by the Red Crescent. Ten rescue teams were in the area, which borders Iran, Sayeeq said.
Food, drinking water, medicine, clothes and tents were urgently needed for rescue and relief, Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban political office in Qatar, said in a message. The medieval minarets of Herat sustained some damage, photographs on social media showed. Hemmed in by mountains, Afghanistan has a history of strong earthquakes, many in the rugged Hindu Kush region bordering Pakistan.
Death count often rise when information comes in from more remote parts of a country where decades of war have left infrastructure in a shambles, and relief and rescue operations difficult to organise.
Afghanistan's healthcare system, reliant almost entirely on foreign aid, has faced crippling cuts in the two years since the Taliban took over and much international assistance, which had formed the backbone of the economy, was halted.
Diplomats and aid officials say concerns over Taliban restrictions on women and competing global humanitarian crises are causing donors to pull back on financial support. The Islamist government has ordered most Afghan female aid staff not to work, although with exemptions in health and education.