Deadly earthquake strikes Afghanistan, India and Pakistan

A powerful earthquake struck a remote area of northeastern Afghanistan on Monday, shaking the capital Kabul and killing at least 17 people while 36 were killed in neighboring Pakistan.

The death toll could climb because communications were down in much of the rugged Hindu Kush mountain range area where the quake was centred.

"The problem is we just don't know. A lot of the phone lines are still down," said Scott Anderson, deputy head of office for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Kabul.

In one of the worst single incidents, a panicked evacuation at girls' school killed at least 12 students in the Afghanprovince of Takhar.

"They fell under the feet of other students," said Abdul Razaq Zinda, provincial head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency, who reported heavy damage in Takhar.

Shockwaves were felt in northern India and in Pakistan, where hundreds of people ran out of buildings as the ground rolled beneath them.

"We were very scared ... We saw people leaving buildings, and we were remembering our God," Pakistani journalist Zubair Khan said by telephone from the Swat Valley northwest of the capital, Islamabad.

The quake was 213 km (132 miles) deep and centred 254 km (158 miles) northeast of Kabul in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially measured the quake's intensity at 7.7 then revised it down to 7.5.