MUZAFFARABAD/ISLAMABAD: An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 shook northern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 19 people and injuring over 300, officials said.
Media photos and video showed a collapsed building and cracks in roads large enough to swallow cars in Mirpur, a town in Pakistan Kashmir.
Naeem Chughtai, a Mirpur resident living near the city’s main hospital, said 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 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.
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. A spokeswoman at the British High Commission said they were monitoring the reports, while the US embassy offered its sympathies to those affected via Twitter.
District commissioner Mohammed Tayyab said eight people were killed, including three children. District police chief Irfan Saleem said more than 100 more suffered injuries.
“I am in the hospital right now and I am being told that several of the injured people are in a critical condition,” he said.
Major General Asif Ghafoor, a spokesman for the Pakistan Armed Forces, tweeted that army troops with aviation and medical support teams were dispatched.
“Our whole concentration right now is to accelerate the rescue operation,” Raja Farooq Haider, Prime Minister of Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir region, told GNN TV. “There are people who are stuck there and who need immediate help. We are putting in all our resources to get people the best of our help.” The quake struck 14 miles (23 km) north of Jhelum, Pakistan, at a relatively shallow depth of 10 km, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
Most damage was in an area between Jhelum and Mirpur, said the chief of Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority, Lieutenant General Mohammed Afzal.
Pakistan straddles part of the boundary where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet, making the country susceptible to earthquakes.
The last major earthquake in Kashmir happened in 2005, killing more than 80,000 people.
Jhelum is located in northeastern Pakistan roughly 120 km southeast of Islamabad. — Agencies
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
