DUSHANBE, July 23, Asia-Plus — Three persons were killed and three others were injured on Sunday as a devastating earthquake hit the Rasht district, Asia-Plus has learned at the Committee for Emergency Situations (CES).

 The source at a CES said that the Khujonov brothers, the 18-year-old Isknadar and Fozil as well as the 12-year-old Ismoil, from the village of Langarak in the Qalai Surkh jamoat of the Rasht district were killed as a wall of building in the filed camp collapsed.  Three other persons -- residents of the village of Chorgaroh – sustained various injuries and were taken to the central district hospital in Gharm, the administrative center of the Rasht district. 

“According to the preliminary data, the tremor affected some 10 villages in the jamoats of Qalai Surkh and Nusrtatullo Makhsum”, the source said, adding that more than 100 residential buildings are supposed to be damaged by the earthquake. 

A special commission is currently working in the district to closely monitor the situation and assess a volume of actual damage caused by the tremor to Rasht.  

According to the Institute of Seismology, the tremor with epicenter in the Rasht district, some 35 kilometers to the north of Gharm, occurred in the early morning of Sunday, at around 3:44 a.m.  The earthquake’s magnitude in the epicenter was 6.0 on a 12-point scale.  

The tremor measuring 3.0 on the 12-point scale could also be felt in Dushanbe.