A series of earthquakes hit the Zenda Jan district in Herat province, western Afghanistan, on Sunday October 8, 2023. The strongest earthquake–with a 6.3 magnitude according to the USGS–was also felt in the neighboring countries of Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. At least 2,500 people were killed and more than 9,000 injured in Afghanistan, local authorities said. It’s one of the deadliest earthquakes to strike the country in two decades.
Earthquakes are common in the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt–a major mountain belt stretching from the Mediterranean through Anatolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia into South-East Asia, so seismologist Simon Redfern in an article for The Conversation. Around a fifth of the world’s largest earthquakes happened here.
The seismic activity is linked to the collision between the Eurasian tectonic plate to the north and the Indian plate to the south. The area marks the scar of the closure of an ancient ocean, the Tethys, which once separated the continents of Gondwana, including most of the landmasses in today’s southern hemisphere, and Laurasia, made up of most of the countries that are today in the northern hemisphere. The Tethyan Ocean closed around 40 million years ago. Still, as the plates continue to be pushed together, the accumulating energy is released from time to time in the form of earthquakes.
Research published in 2008 suggested that earthquakes can be caused by the tearing off of sections of ancient ocean floor sinking into the Earth’s mantle beneath today’s continent. As large portions of rock break off, the stretched ground rebounds along fault lines triggering earthquakes on the surface.
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