Western Afghanistan hit again by 6.3-magnitude quake

Kabul [Afghanistan], October 12: Another strong earthquake struck western Afghanistan on Wednesday morning, in the same area where a series of powerful tremors on the weekend left some 2,400 people dead.
According to the local officials, one dead person and 153 wounded victims had been taken to hospital after Wednesday's quake. More villages have been flattened in at least three districts of Herat province.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors seismic activity, put the magnitude of the latest quake at 6.3. It struck at 0041 GMT near the western city of Herat, close to the epicentre of Saturday's disaster, at a shallow depth of about 9 kilometres.
On Saturday a series of quakes with magnitudes of between 4.6 and 6.3 shook the same area at a depth of around 10 kilometres, killing around 2,400 people and completely flattening at least 20 villages, according to the latest figures by the Taliban-run government. The quakes were also felt in neighbouring Iran. Residents of the metropolis of Mashhad in Iran, around 300 kilometres from the earthquake zone, said that the walls of houses were shaking.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said Tuesday that famine was likely in Afghanistan, due to drastically reduced funding.
WFP Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific John Aylieff told German news website Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) that the situation was hopeless. In the report, which was made available to DPA ahead of publication, Aylieff said the humanitarian aid programmes are drastically underfunded.
The WFP has approximately 80 percent less money for Afghanistan than last year, Aylieff said. Instead of $1.6bn, only $340mn were available for the country.
Fifteen million people in Afghanistan are currently suffering from hunger, he said, telling RND that the WFP wanted to reach at least 13 million people, but due to the lack of funds they had to cut off aid to 10 million of them. Aylieff said the approaching "brutal" winter in Afghanistan meant the situation was critical. He told RND that some mountain villages are cut off from the outside world for up to six months by snow and cannot survive without supplies.
Source: Qatar Tribune