Death toll rises to 920 in Afghanistan earthquake - PHOTOS

An earthquake in eastern Afghanistan has killed at least 920 people an Afghan emergency official told a press briefing on Wednesday.

The Taliban's deputy minister for disaster management Sharafuddin Muslim, said that the number of dead was likely to rise.

"Unfortunately, last night there was a severe earthquake in four districts of Paktika province, which killed and injured hundreds of our countrymen and destroyed dozens of houses," local official Bilal Karimi said on Twitter earlier.

Rayan said dozens were killed and injured in the earthquake in the neighboring Khost province as well.

The earthquake's tremors were felt over 500 kilometers (310 miles) by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, according to the European seismological agency EMSC, which put the magnitude at 6.1.

According to Marty, medics believe the death toll is likely much higher than the officially confirmed figure, with a doctor saying around 400 people were killed.

Region vulnerable to earthquakes

Afghanistan's mountainous northeast lies in the area where the Indian tectonic plate collides with the Eurasian plate to the north, making the region vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.

In 2015, more than 200 people were killed in northeastern Afghanistan and neighboring northern Pakistan as a major earthquake hit.

Around 1,000 people were killed in a 6.1-magnitude quake in 2002, four years after another devastating 6.1 earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan's remote northeast killed at least 4,500 people.