The death toll from a series of earthquakes that hit western Afghanistan’s Herat province on Saturday rose to nearly 2,500, leaving thousands without food or shelter.

The final death toll was controversial. Janan Saeed, a spokesman for the Taliban government’s disaster ministry in Afghanistan, said in an email to Reuters that the death toll was 2,445, with more than 2,000 wounded. Kabul Metropolitan Police, Khalid Sadran, quoted officials from Afghanistan’s Disaster Management Authority as saying the death toll exceeded 2,500, according to Anadolu Agency.

More than 1,300 houses have been partially or completely destroyed as a result of these earthquakes, Sadran said, at a time when relief and rescue teams are struggling to respond to these needs and rescue victims and injured trapped in the rubble of damaged houses.

Local officials in Herat province described the loss of life and damage as staggering, and local media, citing the Afghan Red Crescent, reported that about 12 villages in Zinda Jan and Korian regions – in Herat province, home to 1.9 million people – were completely destroyed. destroyed.

Citing some residents of the affected area in Herat province, media reported that the earthquake and aftershocks caused panic among the city’s residents.

The US Geological Survey said Saturday’s earthquakes in the west of the country were centered 35 kilometers northwest of the city of Herat, one of which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale. After the worst earthquakes in the world this year… Turkey and Syria had about 50,000 last February.

In June 2022, a 5.9-magnitude earthquake killed more than 1,000 people and tens of thousands more in Paktika province in southeastern Afghanistan, which is prone to earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the meeting point of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.