MUSAKHEL: Dozens of people have been injured and hundreds of homes damaged following a series of earthquakes that struck the Musakhel district and upper regions of Balochistan.
According to local sources, at least 20 individuals sustained injuries in Musakhel alone, including a young girl who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.
The tremors have left numerous families displaced.
The affected residents have urgently appealed to the Deputy Commissioner of Musakhel for immediate provisions of food, medicines, and essential relief supplies.
In response, rescue teams have initiated emergency relief operations in the affected areas.
Meanwhile, the district of Kohlu was rattled three times in a single day by consecutive tremors—two occurring in the morning and one in the evening—triggering widespread panic among the local population.
These seismic events in Balochistan coincide with global tectonic activity, coming immediately after a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in Venezuela yesterday and a powerful magnitude 6.7 earthquake in the Philippines today.
Context: Deadliest Earthquakes in Balochistan
Balochistan rests on a highly volatile tectonic landscape where the Indian, Eurasian, and Arabian plates meet, making it incredibly prone to catastrophic seismic activity.
Over the decades, the province’s active fault lines, such as the Chaman and Ghazaband faults, have triggered some of the deadliest natural disasters in South Asia’s history.
The most devastating event occurred on May 31, 1935, when a massive magnitude 7.7 earthquake leveled the provincial capital of Quetta.
Striking in the early hours of the morning while residents slept, the violent tremors reduced entire military and residential quarters to rubble, claiming between 30,000 and 60,000 lives.
It remains one of the worst natural disasters in the region’s history.
A decade later, on November 28, 1945, a colossal magnitude 8.1 submarine earthquake struck off the Makran Coast, generating a massive 15-meter tsunami that decimated coastal villages and killed roughly 4,000 people.
In more recent history, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit the remote Awaran district on September 24, 2013.
The shallow shaking collapsed over 20,000 mud-brick homes and killed more than 800 people, altering the geography so intensely that it temporarily birthed a new island off the coastline.
