6.2 magnitude earthquake felt in Islamabad, nearby cities

Earthquake also felt in Lahore, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Abbottabad and Sargodha.

ISLAMABAD: A 6.2 magnitude earthquake shook parts of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Thursday.

The tremors were felt for 35 seconds around 7:01pm. The epicentre is reported to be in the Hindu Kush region.

The United States Geological Survey, which records earthquakes all over the world reported that an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 struck with its epicentre 121 kilometres north west of Chitral.

The department recorded a second earthquake measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale roughly an hour later with its epicentre eight km south east of the first earthquake.

The earthquake was felt in the capital Islamabad, Lahore, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Abbottabad, Sargodha, Chitral and Haripur.

Panic gripped the affected areas with people seen rushing for safety and reciting verses from the Holy Quran.

Express News reported that people in Islamabad were feeling aftershocks at regular intervals. The intensity of one of the aftershocks was reported at 5.1 on the Richter scale.

NDTV reported that the earthquake had been felt as far as India.

Earlier on Wednesday, the USGS reported that there had been two more earthquakes minutes apart with magnitudes of 4.2 and with epicentres 70 km and 55 km north of Khaplu in the Himalaya region of Pakistan.

A 7.6-magnitude earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005 killed 74,000 people and displaced 3.5 million.