Just before 1 a.m. local time on 3 November 2025 (20:29 UTC on 2 November), a magnitude 6.2 oblique-reverse quake ruptured a shallow crustal thrust of the Alburz-Mormul belt, some 28 km down, in the northern-Afghan foreland 30 km south-east of Mazār-e Sharīf. It killed at least 26 people (press and IFRC counts run to around 31), injured 1,172, and destroyed 1,319 homes across six provinces, worst in Balkh and Samangan. A landslide at Khulm was among the deadliest single incidents, and the historic Blue Mosque at Mazār-e Sharīf lost masonry and turquoise tilework, though its dome held.
The magnitude itself was unremarkable, nearly 4,000 catalogued earthquakes have been larger, but the mud-brick and undressed-stone homes of Balkh and Samangan collapsed onto sleeping families in the middle of the night, turning a moderate quake into a mass-casualty disaster. It was Afghanistan's second deadly earthquake of 2025, coming two months after Kunar killed on the order of 2,200 to 3,000, and it struck a country with : whatever the eventual damage estimate, the loss is to a first approximation entirely uninsured, and falls on households and an already-stretched humanitarian response.