Powerful earthquakes in Afghanistan have killed more than 2,000 people and injured more than 9,000, the Taliban administration has said.
Amid the confusion, the death toll from yesterday's quakes spiked from 500 reported this morning by a Red Crescent spokesperson and 16 from Saturday night.
The quakes hit 35km northwest of the city of Herat, with one measuring 6.3 magnitude, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.
A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Disasters, told Reuters that 2,053 people were dead, 9,240 injured and 1,329 houses damaged or destroyed.
More than 200 dead had been brought to different hospitals, a Herat health department official said, adding most of them were women and children.
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As night fell yesterday in Sarboland village of Zinda Jan district, an AFP reporter saw dozens of homes ruined near the epicentre of the quakes, which shook the area for more than five hours.
Men shovelled through piles of crumbled masonry as women and children waited in the open, with gutted homes displaying personal belongings flapping in the harsh wind.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said more than 600 houses were destroyed or partially damaged across at least 12 villages in Herat province, with some 4,200 people affected.
Afghanistan is already suffering in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis, with the widespread withdrawal of foreign aid following the Taliban's return to power in 2021.
Herat province - home to around 1.9 million people on the border with Iran - has also been hit by a years-long drought that has crippled many agricultural communities.
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
More than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless in June last year after a 5.9-magnitude quake - the deadliest in Afghanistan in nearly a quarter of a century - struck the impoverished province of Paktika.
