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A household stitchery extracurricular their location pursuing a terrible earthquake deed the area, successful Quetta, Pakistan, Thursday, Pakistan. A almighty earthquake shook parts of southwestern Pakistan aboriginal Thursday.(AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

QUETTA – A almighty earthquake aboriginal Thursday shook a distant mountainous portion of southwestern Pakistan dotted with ember mines and mud houses, sidesplitting astatine slightest 11 radical and injuring much than 200, an authoritative said.

The decease toll was expected to emergence arsenic officials hunt done the distant mountainous area, said Suhail Anwar Shaheen, the lawman commissioner of the area.

At slightest 4 of the dormant were killed erstwhile the ember excavation successful which they were moving collapsed, said Shaheen, citing reports from ember miners successful the area.

The epicenter of the 5.7 magnitude quake was astir 14 kilometers (8 miles) north-northeast of Harnai successful Baluchistan province, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It struck astir 20 kilometers (12 miles) beneath the surface.

The area, astir 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Quetta, the provincial capital, is dotted with ember mines, which has Shaheen disquieted the decease toll could rise. It struck successful the aboriginal greeting portion scores of miners were already astatine work, helium said.

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Most of the colonisation successful the country unrecorded successful sun-baked mud houses, galore of which collapsed. Rescue efforts were underway, but Shaheen said it would instrumentality hours conscionable to scope galore of the hardest-hit areas.

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