At least 15 people were injured in Afghanistan after the 6.7-magnitude quake struck at 2:48 am (2148 GMT Monday) with an epicentre in the remote Hindu Kush range along the border with Pakistan.

The massive tremor destroyed 200 homes in the northeastern province of Badakshan and killed 400 domestic animals, the Afghan interior ministry said.

"And 10 persons, three of them children, have got minor injuries," ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai told AFP.

Stanizai said the ministry was awaiting reports from outlying areas of the province.

The quake also injured five people in Jalalabad, capital of the eastern province of Nangahar, doctor Ayoob Shinwari at the main city hospital told AFP.

Witnesses said it felt like the strongest tremor since the 7.6-magnitude earthquake on October 8 that killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan alone.

That quake also left around 3.5 million people homeless, mainly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and parts of the North West Frontier Province.

In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, many survivors of the October quake rushed from their tents and from houses still left standing by the original disaster.

"It was very strong. People came out of their tents and started screaming and reciting verses from the Koran," resident Sarfraz Ahmad said.

"The people living in buildings spared by the big quake were the most terrified," he added.

"Now everyone is getting back into their shelters. They are reluctant, but they have no choice because the cold is unbearable." Despite the panic, Pakistani and Indian officials reported no immediate casualties.

"Our men are surveying positions in remote villages but there are no casualties so far," said a police spokesman in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, where over 1,300 people were killed in the October disaster.

Haleema Akhter said that seven members of her family had braved the freezing winter cold for 30 minutes after the temblor shook them from their beds.

"Thanks be to Allah that all my relatives are safe," she said in Srinagar.

"It was only after my two little children started shivering in cold that we decided to go back," she said.

The tremor triggered minor landslides in northern Indian villages, already destroyed by the October earthquake, also forcing survivors to spend the night in the open.

"We raced out of our tents and tin sheds when soil and stones started rolling down from the mountain tops," said 21-year-old Nadeem Abassi from Gwalta village in the Uri region.

"Fortunately there were no casualties or loss of property but it created lots of panic," Abassi said, adding that the October earthquake killed 65 of his relatives and friends.

Mosques in Indian-administered Kashmir were busier on Tuesday than usual, residents said. "I went to the mosque to pray to Allah for forgiveness," said Zulfikar Sheikh, 43.

"We've definitely done some wrong! That's why this is happening again and again," he said, adding that the quake had widened the cracks in his house created by October's massive earthquake.

The epicentre of Tuesday's quake was in the Hindu Kush mountains about 375 kilometres (235 miles) north of Islamabad, seismological official Nasir Mehmood from the Pakistan Meteorological Department told AFP.

The Hindu Kush is a sparsely populated area of small, remote villages that has been jolted by several quakes in the past years, being near the collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates where seismic activity is high.

An earthquake measuring 6.1 in Afghanistan's Hindu Kush region in March 2002 killed around 1,000 people and destroyed several villages, according to the US Geological Survey.

Source: Agence France-Presse

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