KARACHI/QUETTA: Since June 1, Karachi has been seeing unusual tremors, with 36 small quakes hitting the city. The Pakistan Meteorological Department linked this activity to the Landhi fault line on Thursday.
The most recent quake hit early today at 1:45 am measuring 2.6 in magnitude. Its epicenter was located 8 km southeast of Malir, with a depth of 10 km.
PMD officials stated that all 36 earthquakes in this seismic swarm in the port city have been minor. These occurred alongside other quake events reported in different areas of Pakistan.
On the same day, another quake struck near Quetta where people felt tremors measuring 2.8 in magnitude.
The National Seismic Monitoring Centre shared that the quake had a depth of 23km, and its epicentre was 75km northeast of Quetta.
One day earlier, Peshawar, the capital city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, shook under a mild earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter Scale. The seismological center stated the tremors came from the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan at a depth of 211km.
These quakes add to a pattern of previous earthquakes that struck different areas in Pakistan.
About a month back, Islamabad and some parts of KP such as Swat, Mardan, Nowshera, Swabi, and North Waziristan, felt an earthquake with a 5.3 magnitude. Its epicenter was again traced to Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush region with a depth of 230km.
Earlier, two other strong earthquakes shook KP, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Punjab, and areas of Afghanistan.
On April 12, an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.5 hit many cities in northern Punjab KP as well as the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Reports noted it occurred at a depth of 12km.
People felt the tremors in cities like Attock and Chakwal in Punjab, while in KP, areas including Peshawar, Mardan, Mohmand, Swabi, Nowshera, Lakki Marwat, Lower Dir, Malakand, and Shabqadar experienced the shaking as well.
A 5.3-magnitude earthquake struck multiple regions of KP, AJK, Punjab, and parts of Afghanistan on April 16.
Pakistan often experiences earthquakes as it lies on an active tectonic boundary between the Indian and Eurasian plates. The Indian plate moves northward and presses against the Eurasian plate, which makes much of South Asia prone to seismic activity.
