The USGS placed the epicenter 43 km south of Jurm, in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, and the quake struck on Saturday, June 27, 2026. Its magnitude was 6.1. The agency’s early reading put the focus 208.3 kilometres underground.
That depth is the main reason the story ends quietly. The shaking was felt widely, but a quake this far down spends much of its energy before it reaches the surface.
What was reported
The tremor was recorded at about 6:05 PM local time, 1:35 PM GMT, according to EFE. Reuters gave a local time of 7:04 pm and a depth of around 215 kilometres, and India’s National Centre for Seismology logged it as 6.2 with the same 215 km figure. EFE later cited the USGS with a revised depth of 199 kilometers. Agencies rarely agree to the decimal in the first hours.
People felt it in Kabul and in several north-eastern provinces, and AFP said it rocked Khost and Nangarhar and reached Islamabad. Residents of Delhi-NCR reported strong tremors, and Gulf News described brief panic there. None of the countries involved reported damage.
Mohammad Akbar Akbari, who directs disaster management in Badakhshan, told EFE the earthquake “was relatively strong” but that the reports so far showed “no casualties or material damage” in nearby parts of the province. The Taliban authorities said their first assessments pointed to no significant impact.
A familiar patch of ground
Jurm sits in the Hindu Kush, where the Eurasian and Indian plates collide, and EFE put the rate of subduction there at no less than 39 millimeters per year. Badakhshan is one of Afghanistan’s most seismically active provinces.
Jurm was also the epicenter of a magnitude 5.3 tremor on April 18, 2026, at a depth of 198.8 kilometers. That one caused no casualties or damage either. The worst recent event in the region was on November 3, 2025: a magnitude 6.3 quake in northern Afghanistan killed 30 people and injured 945 in Balkh and Samangan provinces, and left structural damage at the Blue Mosque, a landmark in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Separately, Gulf News noted that at least five moderate earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 to 5.3 had hit Pakistan’s Balochistan since Friday. They injured at least five people and damaged several mud houses in remote areas such as Barkhan, Musakhail, Kohlu, Kingri and Rakhni.
Sources
- Strong 6.1 earthquake hits Afghanistan, tremors felt in India and Pakistan – Gulf News
- Earthquake jolts northeastern Afghanistan; read here – Amar Ujala (PTI)
- 6.1 Earthquake Strikes Afghanistan – CiberCuba (EFE)
