The United States Geological Survey recorded a Magnitude 6.5 Earthquake at a depth of 187.6 km, roughly 4 km to the southeast of the town of Jurm, in Badakhshan Province in northeast Afghanistan, slightly after 9.15 pm local time (slightly after 4.45 pm GMT) on Tuesday 21 March 2023. The Earthquake was felt across a wide area of South and Central Asia, from northern India though northeast Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Over 300 people have been injured and at least 19 killed, 10 in Afghanistan and 9 in Pakistan, following the event, which triggered numerous landslides and many buildings to collapse.
The boundary between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates runs close to northern Afghanistan. The Indian Plate is moving northward relative to the Eurasian Plate, causing folding and uplift along this boundary, which has led to the formation of the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, the Himalayas and the other mountain ranges of Central Asia., and which makes the nations in this boundary zone prone to Earthquakes.
See also...
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Twitter.
