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KABUL: A 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif early on Monday, killing at least nine people and injuring about 150, provincial authorities said on Monday.
The US Geological Survey said the quake hit at a depth of 28 km (17.4 miles) near Mazar-i-Sharif, which has a population of about 523,000.
The toll was based on hospital reports collected as of Monday morning, he said.

Four people were killed in Balkh province, where Mazar-i-Sharif is the capital, according to Kamal Khan Zadran, a health department spokesman.
He said the provincial hospital was also treating 120 people for injuries.
Mohammadullah Hamad, spokesman of Afghanistan's National Disaster Management Authority, said that five people had been killed and 143 wounded in neighboring Samangan province.
“Most of the injured have returned home after receiving treatment,” he said in a statement.
The earthquake destroyed part of the holy shrine of Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh province spokesperson Hajji Zaid said, referring to the Blue Mosque.

The USGS issued an orange alert in its PAGER system, which is an automated system that produces information on the impact of earthquakes, and indicated that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread.”

The country’s national disaster management agency said reports on casualties and damage would be shared later.
Videos of rescue efforts being carried out to save people trapped under rubble and images of fallen debris in buildings were shared on the social media platform X. One video showed rescuers pulling what appeared to be dead bodies from rubble.

Poor communication networks and infrastructure in mountainous Afghanistan have hampered disaster responses in the past, preventing authorities for hours or even days from reaching far-flung villages to assess the extent of the damage.
The quake sent residents of Mazar-i-Sharif, one of Afghanistan’s largest northern cities, running into the streets due to fears their homes would collapse, an AFP correspondent observed.
Past events with this alert level have required a regional or national level response, the system’s alert added.
The Taliban authorities have had to deal with several major quakes since returning to power in 2021, including one in 2023 in the western Herat region on the border with Iran that killed more than 1,500 people and destroyed more than 63,000 homes.
A shallow 6.0-magnitude quake struck this year on August 31 in the country’s east, killing more than 2,200 people — the deadliest tremor in recent Afghan history.
Earthquakes are common in Afghanistan, particularly along the Hindu Kush mountain range, near where the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates meet.
Afghanistan is contending with multiple crises after decades of war: endemic poverty, severe drought and the influx of millions of Afghans forced back home by neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
Many modest Afghan homes are shoddily built and poor infrastructure hampers rescue efforts after natural disasters like quakes.
Since 1900, northeastern Afghanistan has been hit by 12 quakes with a magnitude above 7, according to Brian Baptie, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey.

ABUJA: Nigeria said on Sunday it would welcome US help in fighting Islamist insurgents as long as its territorial integrity is respected, responding to threats of military action by President Donald Trump over what he said was the ill treatment of Christians in the West African country.
Trump said on Saturday that he had asked the Defense Department to prepare for possible “fast” military action in Nigeria if Africa’s most populous country fails to crack down on the killing of Christians.
“We welcome US assistance as long as it recognizes our territorial integrity,” Daniel Bwala, an adviser to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, told Reuters.
But Trump on Sunday told reporters the US military could deploy troops to Nigeria or carry out air strikes to stop what he called the killing of “very large numbers” of Christians there, but gave no further details.
“I envisage a lot of things,” Trump said aboard Air Force One, without elaborating.
Bwala sought to play down tensions between the two states, despite Trump calling Nigeria a “disgraced country.”
“We don’t take it literally, because we know Donald Trump thinks well of Nigeria,” Bwala said.
“I am sure by the time these two leaders meet and sit, there would be better outcomes in our joint resolve to fight terrorism,” he said.

Vast majority of victims are Muslims
Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people and around 200 ethnic groups, is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
Islamist insurgents such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province have wrought havoc in the country for more than 15 years, killing thousands of people, but their attacks have been largely confined to the northeast of the country, which is majority Muslim.
While Christians have been killed, the vast majority of the victims have been Muslims, analysts say.
In central Nigeria there have been frequent clashes between mostly Muslim herders and mainly Christian farmers over access to water and pasture, while in the northwest of the country, gunmen routinely attack villages, kidnapping residents for ransom.
Nigeria “does not discriminate against any tribe or religion in the fight against insecurity,” Bwala said. “There is no Christian genocide.”

Wreaking havoc

“Insurgent groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa often present their campaigns as anti-Christian, but in practice their violence is indiscriminate and devastates entire communities,” said Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at US crisis-monitoring group ACLED.
“Islamist violence is part of the complex and often overlapping conflict dynamics in the country over political power, land disputes, ethnicity, cult affiliation, and banditry,” he said.
ACLED research shows that out of 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria so far this year, the number of those targeting Christians because of their religion stood at 50. Serwat said recent claims circulating among some US right-wing circles that as many as 100,000 Christians had been killed in Nigeria since 2009 are not supported by available data.

Trump’s threat of military action came a day after his administration added Nigeria back to a “Countries of Particular Concern” list of nations that the US says have violated religious freedoms. Other nations on the list include China, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Pakistan.

Striking a balance

Tinubu, a Muslim from southern Nigeria who is married to a Christian pastor, on Saturday pushed back against accusations of religious intolerance and defended his country’s efforts to protect religious freedom.

When making key government and military appointments, Tinubu, like his predecessors, has sought to strike a balance to make sure that Muslims and Christians are represented equally. Last week, Tinubu changed the country’s military leadership and appointed a Christian as the new defense chief.
In the capital Abuja, some Christians going to Sunday Mass said they would welcome a US military intervention to protect their community.

“I feel if Donald Trump said they want to come in, they should come in and there is nothing wrong with that,” said businesswoman Juliet Sur.
Security experts said any US air strikes would most likely seek to target small groups scattered across a very large swathe of territory, a task that could be made more difficult given the US withdrew its forces last year from Niger, which borders Nigeria in the north.
The militant groups move between neighboring countries Cameroon, Chad and Niger, and the experts said the US may require help from the Nigerian military and government, which Trump threatened to cut off from assistance.