An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 shook northern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 19 people and injuring 100, government and police officials said.
Media photos and video showed a collapsed building and cracks in roads large enough to swallow cars in Mirpur, a town on Pakistan's side of the disputed territory of Kashmir near India.
"At least 19 people have been killed and more than 300 wounded," said Sardar Gulfaraz, deputy inspector general of police in Mirpur, in televised comments
"I am in the hospital right now and I am being told that several of the injured people are in a critical condition," he told Reuters by phone.
Roads and infrastructure damaged in Mirpur, Bhimbar and other areas of AJ&K due to #earthquake an hour ago.
— Danyal Gilani (@DanyalGilani) September 24, 2019
Pics via a colleague pic.twitter.com/joUUt74ppi
Major General Asif Ghafoor, a spokesman for the Pakistan Armed Forces, tweeted that army troops with aviation and medical support teams were dispatched.
"Our whole concentration right now is to accelerate the rescue operation," Raja Farooq Haider, prime minister of Pakistan's Azad Kashmir region, 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."
The quake struck 23km north of Jhelum, Pakistan, at a relatively shallow depth of 10km, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
Most damage was in an area between Jhelum and Mirpur, said the chief of Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, Lieutenant General Mohammad Afzal.
The last major earthquake in Kashmir happened in 2005, killing more than 80,000 people.
Jhelum is located in north-eastern Pakistan roughly 120km southeast of Islamabad.
