Afghanistan on Sunday, the latest to hit an area where entire villages have been demolished and over 1,000 people have been killed by a series of tremors this month.
The quake struck at 03:36 GMT, 33 kilometers (20 miles) from Herat city, the headquarters of the same-named western province, according to the USGS.
On October 7, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake and eight violent aftershocks shocked the same area of Herat, destroying swaths of rural dwellings and killing over 1,000 people and injuring hundreds more.
Days later, when thousands of scared citizens were left without shelter and volunteers dug for survivors, another tremor of the same magnitude killed one person and wounded 130 others.
More than 90 per cent of those killed in the quakes were women and children, UNICEF said on Wednesday.
The United Nations said more than 12,000 people were affected by the tremors.
Providing large-scale shelter would be difficult for Afghanistan’s Taliban government, who took control in August 2021 and have strained relations with Western humanitarian organizations.
The majority of rural Afghan dwellings are composed of mud and erected around wooden support poles, with no steel or concrete reinforcement.
Because multigenerational extended families typically live under the same roof, severe earthquakes can destroy towns.
Afghanistan is already in the grip of a humanitarian crisis as a result of the widespread withdrawal of international help following the Taliban’s re-election.
