Magnitude 6 earthquake jolts Rawalpindi, Islamabad, KP districts

ISLAMABAD: An earthquake of magnitude 6 earthquake jolted twin cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, adjoining areas and several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, ARY News reported on Sunday.

Local residents out of fear and panic ran out of their homes to open space in the wee hours of Sunday morning after temblor jolted the area.

The earthquake tremors were also felt in Swat, Peshawar, Buttgram, Upper Dir, Swabi, Mardan, Kohat districts and adjoining areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to National Seismic Monitoring Centre in Islamabad, tremors were also felt at Lower Dir, Buner, Mohmand and Charsadda districts of KP.

The National Seismic Monitoring Centre said that the intensity of the earthquake was recorded at magnitude six on the Richter scale and the epicentre was in the border area of Afghan-Tajikistan at a depth of 223 kilometers.

According to reports, tremors were also felt at Murree, Chiniot, Phalya, Malikwal, Zafarwal, Shakargarh, Jalalpur Bhattian, Sara-e-Alamgir, Sargodha, Hujra Shah Muqeem, Farooqabad and Faisalabad.

The quake also jolted at Gilgit in GB region and Bagh and Muzaffarabad in Kashmir.

Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in a statement said that its control room didn’t receive reports of any losses. “People should inform the PDMA control room on number 1700”, the PDMA said.

Earlier in January, Earthquake tremors of 5.6 intensity jolted Peshawar, Kohat and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

According to the National Seismic Monitoring Centre (NSMC), the epicenter of the earthquake was 237km away from Chitral in the west. The depth of the earthquake was 190 km and its magnitude on the Richter scale was 5.6.