Dozens Killed in Afghan Quake

KABUL, Afghanistan — A powerful earthquake struck northern Afghanistan for the third time in less than two months Friday, flattening a village and killing dozens of people.

Citing the Interior Ministry, state television said the quake killed at least 50 people and injured about 150 in three villages in the rugged Hindu Kush mountains, not far from the epicenter of a March 25 quake that killed as many as 1,000 people.

Aid workers said most of the casualties Friday were in Doabi, a village of about 3,000 people 90 miles north of Kabul, the capital. “Not a single house is standing there,” said Fahrana Faruqi, a United Nations official.

The 8:30 a.m. quake had a magnitude of 5.8, according to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

Friday’s quake was the third deadly temblor to hit northern Afghanistan in six weeks. A magnitude 7.2 quake that struck in the same area of the Hindu Kush on March 3, killing more than 100 people, was the strongest to hit the region since 1983.