QUETTA (Pakistan) • An earthquake of magnitude 5.7 hit southern Pakistan in the early hours yesterday, killing 20 people - most of them women and children - and injuring about 300, at a time when many victims were asleep, the authorities said.
The earthquake struck at a shallow depth of about 20km, with its epicentre 102km east of the city of Quetta, according to the US Geological Survey.
"I was sleeping when suddenly my entire house jolted," Mr Munir Shah, 40, a resident of Harnai district in Balochistan province, said by telephone.
"I took my children and wife outside. It was a terrifying situation as houses were collapsing, my house was also damaged. I found a large number of people under debris. Some of them might have died."
More than 100 mud houses collapsed and many buildings were damaged, according to district official Sohail Anwar.
Television images showed buildings with gaping cracks, caved-in roofs and crumpled walls.
About 250 homes collapsed and many people were killed by falling roofs and crumbling walls in the district's Babu Mohallah neighbourhood, said local journalist Nawab Khan.
"The entire town is a picture of devastation; no house looks safe, thousands of people are rendered homeless and are under open sky," Mr Khan said, adding that almost 70 per cent of power supply to the district had been disrupted.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has ordered an assessment of the damages and offered condolences to families that lost loved ones, saying: "I have ordered immediate assistance on an emergency basis... for the earthquake victims."
Social media showed houses shaking and light fittings swaying as the quake struck.
Stunned residents later gathered in the streets in the dark.
Geo Television carried CCTV footage of trucks shaking. Rescuers sifted through rubble for survivors, with some of the injured being treated on stretchers in the street by torchlight from phones.
"The earthquake struck at about 3am," said one resident, Mr Muzaffar Khan Tareen, adding that some of the seriously injured were waiting for ambulances to take them to Quetta.
An army helicopter flew at least nine of the seriously injured to Quetta, state-run Associated Press Pakistan said.
Aftershocks were being felt across the region. Pakistan sits on top of colliding tectonic plates and earthquakes are common.
A 7.7-magnitude quake that hit Quetta in 1935 killed between 30,000 and 60,000 and destroyed much of the city. In 2005, a magnitude 7.6 quake killed about 73,000 people when it struck about 95km north-east of the capital, Islamabad.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
