At least 610 people are feared dead after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hits eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban interior ministry said on Monday, September 1. More than 1,300 people have been injured, the ministry says. The quake, at a shallow depth of 8km, shook buildings from Kabul to Pakistan's capital Islamabad. The remote area where it struck makes providing accurate estimates hard, as officials warn of high casualty figures Dozens of houses are under rubble, sources from the Taliban government say, while officials report entire villages being destroyed. The earthquake's epicentre was 27km away from Jalalabad, Afghanistan's fifth-largest city, and around 140km (87 miles) from the capital Kabul.
