On August 31, shortly after 9 p.m. CEST (local time: 11:47 p.m.), an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.1 struck east of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. According to media reports, several hundred people have died and thousands have been injured. The quake originated in a depth of approximately 14 kilometers. 

Earthquakes are common in the region, including severe ones. They are caused by the movement of tectonic plates. Several geological fault zones are found in this region, which stem from the collision of the Indian Plate and the Eurasian continent. The Indian Plate is pushing against and diving under the Eurasian Plate. As a consequence, a very wide deformation belt formed, along which the Earth’s crust gets folded like a crumple zone. This causes stresses to build up along fault zones, which are abruptly released in earthquakes.

In the Hindu Kush region currently affected, the plate boundary between the Indian and Eurasian Plate runs in a northeast-southwest direction. The Hindu Kush is part of the mountain belt between the Alps and the Himalayas and lies west of the Himalayas. Transversal to the plate boundary, the Indian Plate is pushing northwestward under the Eurasian Plate. The current earthquake is a so-called reverse or thrust fault earthquake.

For more than a decade, the GFZ has been investigating the tectonics and geodynamics of the Central Asian mountains of Pamir, Tien Shan, and Hindu Kush, repeatedly installing temporary measuring stations in cooperation with local authorities and local support staff. The recent seismic activity underscores the need for thorough scientific investigation in the region. A seismic station in Kabul, which is part of the GFZ's global GEOFON network and the GFZ's Global Change Observatory Central Asia, which focuses on geo-hazards, is also contributing to the analysis of earthquakes in the region. However, due to the long-standing political unrest in the region, our ability to directly observe events in this region is limited: there are only a very small number of seismic stations and no GNSS stations for accurate positioning via satellite measurements.