ISLAMABAD, March 4: At least 150 people have been killed in Afghanistan’s northern Samangan province by landslides caused by Sunday’s earthquake, raising the death toll to 210, according to an Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) report on Monday.

The news agency reported, quoting a radio Kabul broadcast, said the tremor destroyed 900 houses in the province, 500 of them in the provincial capital of Aybak alone.

U.N. sources in Islamabad had earlier spoken of more than 60 people killed and 100 missing after the earthquake. AIP’s unconfirmed report implied that the 150 deaths mentioned on Monday were in addition to those.

Khalid Mansour, a World Food Programme (WFP) official, told newsmen that the U.N. food agency had received its information on the deaths and casualties from authorities in Samangan province.

Two helicopters flew experts from the WFP office in the Samangan capital of Mazar-i-Sharif to the affected villages. They were due to return in the evening after assessing the situation, he said.

Meanwhile 22 tons of relief goods have been dispatched to the area by trucks.

A C-130 transport aircraft was standing by in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to lift emergency aid if needed.

Samangan is 250 kilometres west of the Hindu Kush mountain range which was the epicentre of the earthquake. The earthquake measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and was 195 kilometres deep.

In Pakistan, landslides triggered by the earthquake blocked roads in mountainous northern Pakistan but claimed no lives.—dpa