They felt tremors in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, including Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore, for the second time in as many weeks as an earthquake of magnitude of 5.9 beaten near the border region of Afghanistan-Tajikistan on Saturday, the authorities said.
The earthquake occurred around 11:48 AM and measured 5.9 on the Richter scale, according to the Pakistan Department of Meteorology (PMD).
He hit a depth of 94 kilometers with his epicenter in the border region of Afghanistan and Tayikistan.
However, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said the earthquake had a magnitude of 5.8 and had a depth of 92 km, while the United States geological service put the magnitude in 5.7 and a depth at 94 km.
As a result, several districts in KP were shaken, but no loss of lives or damage were reported, said Rescue Spokesman 1122, Bilal Ahmad Faizi.
The tremors felt in the districts of Battagram, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Shangla, Nowshera, Peshawar and Swabi, which causes people to leave buildings, according to a Dawn.com correspondent.
Meanwhile, the Punjab Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), citing initial reports in a statement, said the jolts felt in several cities there, including Lahore, Gujrat and Faisalabad.
“The administrations of all the Punjab inspect buildings,” said the general director of PDMA. He added that the equipment and machinery had remained on alert to “deal with the aftershocks of the earthquake.”
Any damage caused by the earthquake can be informed to the PDMA by calling its help of 1129, according to the statement.
A week ago, victims were not reported after an earthquake of 5.5 magnitude hit near Islamabad and Rawalpindi. That tremor occurred an hour after the separate earthquakes, measuring 4.3 and 3.8 on the Richter scale, hit the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border region.
Pakistan witnessed around 20 earthquakes of low intensity in the first half of February, an average of more than one tremor every day.
However, experts had pointed out that such minor seismic activities “are ahead of the high intensity earthquakes by constantly releasing accumulated energy within tectonic plates.
Pakistan falls to three important tectonic plates, Arabic, Euro-Asian and Indian, according to the geological engineer Muhammad Rean, creating five seismic areas within the country.
Additional contribution of Humayun Baber, Reuters
