At least 53 people have been killed in the quake and hundreds injured. Around 17 people are known to have died in Afghanistan, while another 36 were killed in Pakistan.
Officials confirmed 12 students at a girls’ school were killed in a stampede as they tried to get out of the shaking buildings in Afghanistan’s Takhar province, according to local officials.
‘They fell under the feet of other students,’ said Abdul Razaq Zinda, provincial head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency.
In Pakistan, at least 29 people died when homes collapsed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
And in the town of Baramulla, in the Indian-controlled part of the disputed Kashmir region, police officer Imtiyaz Hussain said an 80-year-old woman became so panicked she had a heart attack and died.
The quake was 130 miles deep, and struck 51 miles southeast of Feyzabad in the Afghanistan’s remote Hindu Kush mountain range.
‘There are reports of casualties and destruction’ in some remote districts of Badakhshan, said the provincial director of the national disaster management authority, Abdullah Humayoon Dehqan.
Power was cut across much of the Afghan capital, where tremors were felt for around 45 seconds. Trees fell, houses shook and buildings collapsed. Officials in the capital could not be immediately reached as telephones appeared to be cut across the country.
In Islamabad, buildings shook and people poured into the streets in a panic, with many reciting verses from the Quran.
‘I was praying when the massive earthquake rattled my home. I came out in a panic,’ said Munir Anwar, a resident of Liaquat Pur in the eastern Punjab province.
And office workers in the Indian capital New Delhi streamed out into the streets as entire buildings shook.
Christina Northey, CARE country director in Afghanistan, told the Guardian: ‘Obviously the situation is going to be much worse for poor and vulnerable people, particularly those who have been displaced by the conflict. Plus winter is starting and there has been a noticeable drop in temperature over the past few days.’
Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah called an emergency meeting of the disaster management authority to assess the damage, his senior adviser Omar Samad tweeted.
Abdullah later tweeted that the government would partner with international relief organisations to provide aid to those affected.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi tweeted his support to victims, and said he had also ordered an urgent assessment of the damage.
The earthquake struck almost exactly six months after Nepal suffered a devastating 7.8 magnitude quake, on April 25 – the worst recorded in its history.
Almost 9,000 people died in the tragedy, and the country is still rebuilding its damaged infrastructure.
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