Kabul, Afghanistan - A day after several strong earthquakes rattled western Afghanistan, the death toll has passed 2,000, officials said on Sunday.

Speaking at a press conference in Kabul, a spokesperson for the country's National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) said that 13 villages were completely destroyed in Saturday's quakes, with thousands of people affected.

More than 1,200 people were injured in the quakes, the spokesman said.

The death toll is preliminary since rescue workers were still searching for survivors, the official added.

At least eight quakes shook the border region near Iran within a short period of time on Saturday morning. The US Geological Survey (USGS), which monitors seismic activity, put the magnitude at values between 4.6 and 6.3. The tremors occurred north-west of the Afghan border town of Herat, at a shallow depth of around six miles.

The tremors were also felt in neighboring Iran.

Those who visited the disaster area in Afghanistan's Herat province, bordering Iran, spoke of an "unbearable" situation and a lack of assistance facilities.

Eyewitnesses said very few people survived in the affected villages.

"We saw five to six villages. They changed to soil. You can't find the difference between a house and a road," Mohammad Rafiq Shirzai, a member of the Emergency Committee, told the DPA news agency via text message. "All flattened."

According to the WHO, about 4,200 people were affected and at least 600 houses destroyed. The largest hospital in the provincial capital of Herat alone had received nearly 200 dead and around 700 injured, according to medical sources.

Severe earthquakes occur repeatedly in the region where the Arabian, Indian, and Eurasian plates meet. A devastating quake killed more than 1,000 people in Afghanistan in 2022.

After several decades of war, many houses are poorly built, which means earthquakes often cause major damage.