A powerful earthquake has rattled northern Afghanistan, killing more than a dozen people, injuring hundreds and damaging one the country’s most beautiful mosques.
Families were jolted awake in the early hours of Monday when the 6.3-magnitude quake struck near Mazar-i-Sharif, one of the most populated cities in the north of the country, at a shallow depth of 28 kilometers (17.4 miles), the United States Geological Survey said.
A massive search and rescue operation is underway, with a child seen pulled alive from the rubble in the north of the country in video released by the Ministry of Defense on Monday morning. The girl was taken to hospital in a critical condition, a spokesperson for the 209 Al-Fath Army Corp told CNN.
Mazar-i-Sharif’s iconic Blue Mosque was damaged in the quake, footage on social media geolocated by CNN revealed, with its base littered with rubble – early evidence of the destruction captured in the shadows before dawn.
The site is one of Afghanistan’s architectural treasures and a major point of pilgrimage, believed by some to be the resting place of Hazrat Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam and the son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad.
Continue reading the complete article on the original source
