Buildings, main road damaged by Wednesday's quake in Kashmir, Indian Air Force airlifts girl to hospital
NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - One man died and 55 people, mostly children, were injured when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake with its epicentre in the Himalayan region of Kashmir shook parts of northern India and Pakistan on Wednesday, the Hindustan Times reported.
The quake was 10 km (six miles) deep and struck at 0657 GMT, 17 km northeast of Bhadarwah town in the Doda district in Indian-administered Kashmir, the US Geological Survey said.
One man died when he was hit by a falling boulder, around 40 children were hurt when their school building collapsed, many houses were damaged and part of a main road collapsed, the report said.The Indian Air Force was called in to airlift to hospital a six-year-old girl who was trapped inside a collapsed building.
South Asia, home to one fifth of humanity, is one of the most quake-prone regions in the world. Six out of eight countries in the region – India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan – are located within the seismically active Himalayan-Hindukush belt.
Around 100,000 minor quakes occur in the region every year and a massive quake of magnitude 8 or greater every 25 years. The last major earthquake in the region was in Pakistan in 2005, a magnitude 7.6 quake that killed more than 73,000 people.
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