The epicenter of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake was thirty kilometers northwest of the provincial capital Herat, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. The quakes lasted a total of five hours and damaged or destroyed more than 600 homes in the region, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
On Saturday evening, a spokesperson for Herat’s disaster team estimated that more than a thousand women, children and seniors in the province had been injured by the earthquakes.
Major earthquakes are more common in the region, where several tectonic plates meet. In 2022, more than a thousand people were killed in Afghanistan as a result of a devastating earthquake.