The Earthquake was 213 km (132 miles) deep and centered 254 km (158 miles) northeast of Kabul in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province.
The earthquake struck a remote area of Afghanistan, shaking the capital Kabul and killing at least 24 people while 76 were killed in neighboring Pakistan, officials said.
The death toll could climb in coming days because communications were down in much of the rugged Hindu Kush mountain range area where the quake was centered.
The U.S. Geological Survey initially measured the quake’s intensity at 7.7 then revised it down to 7.5.
Just over a decade ago, a 7.6 magnitude quake in another part of northern Pakistan killed about 75,000 people.
In Afghanistan, a total of 24 were reported dead on Monday including the 12 schoolgirls, seven people in the eastern province of Nangarhar, two in Nuristan province in the northeast and three in eastern Kunar province, officials said.
The earthquake struck almost exactly six months after Nepal suffered its worst quake on record, on April 25. Including the toll from a major aftershock in May, 9,000 people lost their lives and 900,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
The mountainous region is seismically active, with earthquakes the result of the Indian subcontinent driving into and under the Eurasian landmass. Sudden tectonic shifts can cause enormous and destructive releases of energy.
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