More than 80 feared dead in Afghan earthquakes

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters/AFP) - An earthquake in Afghanistan triggered a landslide which buried mud homes in a mountain village and rescuers feared at least 80 people had been killed, provincial officials said on Tuesday,

Two quakes with magnitudes of 5.4 and 5.7 struck mountainous northern Afghanistan on Monday, bringing a slide of mud and rocks down on the remote settlement.

The governor of Baghlan province said 22 homes were buried but the bodies of only two women had been recovered. Twenty people were in hospital with injuries. "We don't think we will be able to take out the other bodies," Governor Abdul Majid said. A rescue team only had one bulldozer to try to clear the rubble, he said. "We will hold a prayer for the victims."

The United Nations said it was working with authorities in the area to determine what aid was needed. In Burka district, the worst-hit area in the province of Baghlan, people in the village of Mullah Jan said 71 people had been trapped. An official who asked not to be named described the chances of survival as "very slim". Officials have so far confirmed that only three bodies have been recovered, while six injured people have been rescued.

A bulldozer was at work digging through the rubble at Mullah Jan, according to Rafiullah Rasoolzai, spokesman for the disaster response agency, who said emergency supplies of food, water and shelter had been brought in. "Villagers told Afghan government representatives that 71 people are missing," he said. "They're buried in their home under between 30 and 100 metres of dirt and earth."

Provincial governor Munshi Abdul Majeed earlier said the sheer volume of soil made digging work very difficult.

"They might be dead as there is a lot of soil and removing this is very, very hard," he said.

"We have sent excavators to the area but I don't think they will be able to do much."

Baghlan Police chief Assadullah Shirzad said around 100 security forces were helping the search.

The first quake on Monday, with a magnitude of 5.4, struck at 9:32 am (0502 GMT) at a depth of 15 kilometres (10 miles) with the epicentre around 160 kilometres southwest of the town of Faizabad. A more powerful tremor, measured at 5.7 magnitude, hit around 25 minutes later in almost exactly the same place, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. Buildings were felt shaking slightly in Kabul, around 170 kilometres to the south, during both quakes.

Northern Afghanistan and Pakistan are frequently hit by earthquakes, especially around the Hindu Kush range, which lies near the collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.

A 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005 killed 74,000 people and displaced 3.5 million.