Earthquake today: 4.6 magnitude quake jolts Afghanistan

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Click here! Meanwhile, Taliban officials has said that the Saturday's earthquake has killed more than 2,000 people across Herat province. According to the UN figures, the epicentre was in Zenda Jan district, where 1,294 people died, 1,688 were injured and every home was destroyed, as reported by Associated Press. A UN official also said that more than 90 percent of the people killed in the earthquake were women and children, as reported by AP.

Women and children were more likely to have been at home when the quake struck in the morning, said Siddig Ibrahim, the chief of the UNICEF field office in Herat. “When the first earthquake hit, people thought it was an explosion, and they ran into their homes," he said as quoted by AP. As per WHO Afghanistan report, at least, 11,066 people (1,835 families) have been affected across Zindajan, Gulran, Kohsan and Kushk d/Rabat-e-Sangai Districts.

The initial quake, numerous aftershocks and a second 6.3-magnitude quake on Wednesday flattened entire villages, destroying hundreds of mud-brick homes that could not withstand such force. Schools, health clinics and other village facilities also collapsed. The Afghanistan representative for the United Nations Population Fund, Jaime Nadal, said there would have been no “gender dimension" to the death toll if the quake had happened at night.

“At that time of the day, men were out in the field," Nadal told The Associated Press. “Many men migrate to Iran for work. The women were at home doing the chores and looking after the children.