Afghanistan suffered its strongest earthquake in more than six decades on Monday, but the full scope of the damage is not yet clear because the worst affected areas are not easily accessible, according to Boston-based catastrophe modeling company AIR Worldwide.

A 7.5 magnitude quake struck 158 miles north of the Afghan capital at a depth of 132 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was the first major temblor in the region since April, when a 7.8 earthquake in Nepal killed more than 8,000 people and triggered deadly avalanches on Mount Everest.

The quake caused landslides, disrupted mobile phone networks and caused houses to collapse in Pakistan, according to news reports. At least 228 people were killed in Pakistan, and more than 1,000 injured, the Associated Press reported. In Afghanistan, officials said 33 died with more than 200 casualties, according to AP.

Area vulnerable

The majority of the local buildings are mud brick, or adobe, which is one of most vulnerable building construction types, according to AIR Worldwide. Other popular building construction types in the region include unreinforced masonry and some reinforced concrete. Much of the building stock in the affected region is not built to standard because of a lack of code enforcement and code compliance practices, AIR said.

Because of exceedingly low penetration of insurance in the affected region, AIR said it does not expect significant insured losses from the earthquake.

The South Asia region has a history of catastrophic earthquakes because the tectonic plate that carries the Indian subcontinent is pushing northward into the main Asian plate. The 7.5-magnitude earthquake is the biggest to hit Afghanistan since 1949, according to USGS data.

“This earthquake occurred at the location where large historic earthquakes of magnitude 7 to 7.5 have repeatedly occurred in the last 100 years, with five earthquakes of magnitude larger than 7.3 within a radius of about 60 kilometers and in the depth range of 200 to 240 kilometers. It seems a hotbed of seismogenic source of large earthquakes at this unusual depth along the boundary of two continental plates,” said Gerald Galgana, a scientist at AIR Worldwide. “The exact cause of this type of deep earthquake, however, is still not well understood.”

Bloomberg contributed to this story.

Special Reports /

Damage, death toll mounts from Afghanistan earthquake

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