At least 1,100 people were reported killed and 3,500 injured after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan, Taliban officials said on September 1, 2025. The toll rose rapidly as information reached authorities from remote communities across several provinces.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake occurred at 11:47 p.m. on Saturday in the Hindu Kush region near the Pakistani border. Its epicentre was about 42 kilometres from Jalalabad, and it originated at an estimated depth of 10 kilometres. Shallow earthquakes can cause severe surface shaking, and reports indicated widespread destruction in rural areas.
Kunar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Nuristan provinces were among the worst affected. Entire villages were reported destroyed, while rescue operations continued. Abdul Jabbar Behir, head of the Afghan Media and Research Center, gave the revised casualty figures in an interview with Al Arabiya. The reporting attributed the totals to Taliban officials and did not provide an independent nationwide count.
Initial reports on Sunday had listed nine deaths and more than 20 injuries in Nangarhar and Kunar. The subsequent increase illustrated the difficulty of assessing damage across mountainous terrain and isolated settlements, where communications and access can delay the arrival of casualty information.
The USGS estimated that between 1,000 and 10,000 deaths were possible and calculated that more than 1.1 million people had experienced very strong to violent shaking. Those figures were a modelled assessment rather than a confirmed toll. Tremors were felt across a broad area, including the Pakistani cities of Peshawar, Islamabad and Lahore and as far away as New Delhi in India.
Afghanistan lies in a highly active seismic region shaped by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. The Hindu Kush and surrounding mountain systems have repeatedly experienced damaging earthquakes. Vulnerable buildings and difficult access can compound the impact when tremors strike rural communities.
The disaster followed other deadly seismic events in the country. A series of earthquakes in Herat province in 2023 killed more than 2,400 people, destroyed thousands of homes and displaced tens of thousands, according to the report.
As teams searched affected districts, the September 1 casualty figures remained provisional. The confirmed scale depended on continued reporting from villages that had not yet been fully reached. Even the available totals, however, made the earthquake one of Afghanistan’s gravest recent natural disasters and created an urgent need for rescue work and medical care across multiple eastern provinces.
