Citing the Afghan disaster management authority, media reports say at least 1000 were killed and more than 600 other injured after a devastating tremor hit  Afghanistan's Paktika province on Wednesday.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGC) says the quake struck about 44 kilometers from the city of Khost, near the Pakistani border.

The state-run Bakhtar news agency reports that 90 houses have been destroyed in Paktika and dozens of people are believed trapped under the rubble.

The European seismological agency EMSC, which put the magnitude at 6.1m says the earthquake's tremors were felt over 500 kilometers by 119 million people across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

It is Afghanistan’s deadliest quake in two decades.

In 2015, an earthquake struck the remote Afghan northeast, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.

It is to be noted that large parts of South Asia are seismically active because a tectonic plate known as the Indian plate is pushing north into the Eurasian plate.