Powerful earthquake in Pakistan and Afghanistan kills at least 13 people.

A 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck large parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, sending panicked residents from their homes and offices and terrorizing remote villages. At least nine people have died in Pakistan and two in Afghanistan, officials said on Wednesday.

More than 200 people have been taken to hospitals in the Swat Valley and elsewhere in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for shock, government services spokesman Bilal Faizi said. Pakistan Emergency to the Associated Press.

“These panic-stricken people fell, and some of them fell from the shock of the earthquake,” he said. Faizi said many were discharged from the hospital.

Faizi and other officials said nine people were killed when roofs collapsed in various parts of northwest Pakistan. Dozens of others were injured in the earthquake that occurred in Afghanistan and was also felt in the neighboring country of Tajikistan. The earthquake caused landslides in some mountainous areas, disrupting traffic.

The nine people who died in northwest Pakistan included five men, two women and two children.

Taimoor Khan, a spokesman for the northwestern provincial disaster management authority, said at least 19 mud-brick houses collapsed in remote areas. “We are still collecting damage data,” he said. Wednesday.

The strong tremors caused many people to flee their homes and offices in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, some reading verses from the Quran, the holy book of Islam. The media indicated that cracks have been seen in some apartment buildings in the city.

In Afghanistan, Sharafat Zaman Amar, the Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said so far at least two people have died and nearly 20 others have been injured in the quake.

Zaman Amar said “Unfortunately there may be more casualties because the earthquake was very strong, in many parts of the country, all hospitals and health centers are ready to save people’s lives,” he adds.

The incident was repeated in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan.

“The earthquake was big and scary, we thought the houses were falling on top of us, all the people were screaming and shocked,” Kabul resident Shafiullah Azimi said.

Aziz Ahmad, 45, another resident of Kabul, said: “In my life, it was the first time to experience such a big earthquake, everyone was scared,” he added. He and all his neighbors stayed out of their homes for hours, fearing the aftershocks. “We didn’t dare to go home.”

The US Geological Survey said the 6.5-magnitude quake was centered 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Jurm in Afghanistan’s Hindukush mountain range, which borders Pakistan and Tajikistan. The earthquake struck 188 kilometers (116 miles) below the Earth’s surface, causing it to be felt over a large area.

Doctor Rakhshinda Tauseed was at her hospital in Lahore, eastern Pakistan, when the earthquake struck. “I quickly asked the patients to move to a safe place,” he said.

Khurram Shahzad, a resident of the Pakistani camp city of Rawalpindi, said he was having dinner with his family at a restaurant when the walls started to collapse.

“I quickly thought it was big, and we left the restaurant and went outside,” he told The Associated Press by phone. He said he saw hundreds of people standing on the road.

The situation was similar in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan, where people were seen standing outside their homes and offices.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said in his statement that he asked disaster management officials to remain vigilant in handling any situation.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, tweeted that the Ministry of Public Health has ordered all health facilities to be ready.

The area is experiencing severe seismic disturbances. A 7.6 magnitude earthquake in 2005 killed thousands of people in Pakistan and Kashmir.