At least 13 people were killed and 203 injured in northwest Tanzania when a magnitude 5.7 earthquake hit the country on Saturday, local authorities told reporters.
“The toll has climbed from 11 people dead to 13 and from 192 injured to 203,” said Deodatus Kinawilo, District Commissioner for Bukoba, the town close to the epicenter of the quake.
“For now, the situation is calm and under control,” said Kinawilo, who was reached by telephone.
“Some people have been discharged from hospital,” he told reporters. “We don’t expect many more injuries. We’ll see tomorrow.”
Residents of Bukoba had said earlier that some houses there had caved in, and Augustine Ollomi, the Kagera Province police chief in charge of the Bukoba district, had said “rescue operations are ongoing.”
The epicenter of the quake was about 25km east of the northwestern town of Nsunga on the border of Lake Victoria, according to the US Geological Survey.
Earthquakes are fairly common in the Great Lakes region, but are almost always of low intensity.
An AFP correspondent in Dar es Salaam whose mother’s family lives in Bukoba said 10 family houses had collapsed.
“My brother was driving around town, suddenly he heard the ground shaking and people starting running around and buildings collapsing,” he said.
The quake rattled the entire province of Kagera.
Parts of Mwanza region further south also felt the quake but there was no impact, he said.
No damage had been reported in the economic capital, Dar es Salaam, which is about 1,400km southeast of Bukoba.
“It’s safe in Dar but we are still worried about the safety of our family,”the AFP correspondent added. “The regional hospital is overwhelmed and can’t handle any more patients. Emergency operations are poor and the government isn’t saying anything.”
The earthquake was felt as far away as Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Kenya, the US Geological Survey said.
“The walls of my home shook as well as the fridge and the cupboards,” an AFP correspondent in Kampala said.
AFP journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo said it was felt in Bukavu in the east, but not in nearby Goma.
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