DISASTER Quake rocks Afghanistan near border with Pakistan

There are casualties, but the details are few.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A powerful earthquake jolted the remote Hindu Kush mountains along Afghanistan's northeast border with Pakistan early today. Reports said at least one person was dead, and probably more.
The quake struck at 1:54 a.m. Afghan time and was felt as far away as the Pakistani city of Lahore. The U.S. Geological Survey said it had a magnitude of 6.6, while Pakistan's Seismological Center put the magnitude at 6.8.
"There are casualties, but we are still trying to sort out the details," the head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, Qarabig Ezedyar, told The Associated Press. He would not speculate on how many.
Death reports
Police also reported hearing of deaths from the quake, which was centered in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province and caused panic even in the capital, Kabul, 175 miles to the southwest.
A woman was crushed to death when a wall collapsed in Badakhshan's Shahri Buzurg district, local police chief Abdul Musbah said.
Officials struggled for details from the isolated communities of flimsy mud houses that dot the inaccessible valleys of Badakhshan, an impoverished region that also borders Tajikistan and China.
The Red Crescent said it had reports of unspecified casualties in the province's Jurm district, south of the provincial capital, Faizabad, where the Hindu Kush rise to over 18,000 feet.
Ezedyar said he had dispatched a team by road from Faizabad to investigate.
More reports
Fazel Ahmad Nazeri, a senior police officer in the Badakhshan town of Kishim, said there were also reports of deaths in the Khash area neighboring Jurm. He also had no details.
Kishim's residents escaped unscathed, Nazeri said.
"People here grabbed their children and ran for their lives. They remember what happened in Takhar," Nazeri said, referring to an earthquake that killed up to 5,000 people in the region in 1998.
Iqbal Mohammed, a government official in Gilgit, in Pakistan's remote northern region, said the quake was severe there but had no reports of casualties or damages.
In Kabul, some residents also dashed from their homes in their nightclothes as the quake rattled windows.
City police said several houses were damaged and a student of Kabul University broke his leg jumping from a second-floor window of his campus lodgings.
Awaiting news
The main towns across the north appeared to have suffered little damage. But officials in the capital acknowledged it could take time for news to filter through.
"The whole region is earthquake-prone," said presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin. "Emergency response has been very challenging in the past because a lot of areas are difficult to access."