News Desk
PESHAWAR: At least 57 students were injured during a stampede in a local school in Battagram as a 4.5-magnitude earthquake jolted parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) province early on Monday morning.
According to Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), three children who received serious injuries were shifted to district hospital for emergency medical treatment.
The quake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale with a focal depth of 9 kilometres, hit many areas, including Battagram and Muzaffarabad among others, United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
In October last year a 7.5-magnitude quake ripped across Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing almost 400 people and flattening buildings in rugged terrain that impeded relief efforts.
Pakistan is located in the Indus-Tsangpo Suture Zone, which is roughly 200 km north of the Himalaya Front and is defined by an exposed ophiolite chain along its southern margin.
This region has the highest rates of seismicity and largest earthquakes in the Himalaya region, caused mainly by movement on thrust faults.
Along the western margin of the Tibetan Plateau, in the vicinity of south-eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, the South Asian plate translates obliquely relative to the Eurasia plate, resulting in a complex fold-and-thrust belt known as the Sulaiman Range. Agencies
