At least 22 people were killed and over 200 were left injured in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) on Tuesday as an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 shook India-Pakistan border.
Photos and video carried by local media showed dozens of collapsed buildings and homes, uprooted trees and cracks in roads large enough to swallow cars in Mirpur, a town in PoK.
Tremors were also felt in parts of north India including Punjab, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and also parts of Uttar Pradesh.
The quake struck 14 miles (23 km) north of Jhelum district of Pakistan's Punjab province, at a relatively shallow depth of 10 km, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported. Jhelum is located in northeastern Pakistan roughly 120 km southeast of Islamabad.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), however, said the magnitude of the earthquake was 5.9 while the India Meteorological Department (IMD) put the intensity at 6 on the Richter scale
The time of the earthquake was at 4:31 pm (IST) and 4:01 (Pakistan time) and the depth was 10 km.
Media photos and video in Pakistan showed a collapsed building and cracks in roads large enough to swallow cars in Mirpur, a town in PoK.
District commissioner Mohammad Tayyab, a local government official, and district police chief Irfan Saleem said 22 people were dead and nearly 200 injured.
Further away from the earthquake zone, the chief of Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, Lieutenant General Mohammad Afzal, said at a briefing in the capital Islamabad that he could confirm 10 deaths.
Army troops with aviation and medical support teams were dispatched, Major General Asif Ghafoor, a spokesman for the Pakistan Armed Forces, said in a tweet.
Rescue operations would take a day or two, Afzal said, adding that the disaster authority was distributing blankets, tents and kitchen sets to affected people.
"Our whole concentration right now is to accelerate the rescue operation," Raja Farooq Haider, prime minister of PoK, told GNN TV. "There are people who are stuck there and who need immediate help. We are putting in all our resources to get people the best of our help."
Most damage was in an area between Jhelum and Mirpur, said Afzal.
In Jammu and Kashmir, police said they were ascertaining details from the ground-level but no damages have been reported so far.
The last major earthquake in PoK and Jammu and Kashmir happened in 2005, killing more than 80,000 people.
(With Reuters inputs)
