Click to play videoMoscow: A strong earthquake centered in the restive Russian region of Chechnya killed at least 12 people, injured more than 100 and caused widespread havoc on Saturday, an official said.
"Twelve victims died in the districts of Gudermes, Shali and Kurchaloy" in eastern Chechnya, a health ministry spokesman said. "It is not excluded that the toll is going to rise further," the official added.
The quake, which struck at around noon 1330 hrs IST, reverberated through the Caucasus mountains, causing severe damage to infrastructure including roads, power supplies and communications, Russian news agencies reported.
Measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale according to Strasbourg observatory estimates, it was felt in five regions of the Russian north Caucasus and as far away as neighbouring Georgia and Armenia.
"The road infrastructure has been seriously damaged" in several other districts including Nozhay-Yurt, Itum-Kali and Vedeno, Chechnya's deputy roads minister Yakha Makhmatkhadzhieva told Interfax news agency.
Earlier, ITAR-TASS news agency cited Chechen deputy emergency situations minister Akhmed Dzheirkhanov as saying that four people had been found dead in the Kurchaloy district and one in Gudermes.
One was a soldier who died when a wall collapsed, said the news agencies. Some 52,000 people from three Chechen districts were left without electricity, according to the Russian emergency situations ministry, cited by Interfax.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said that he had ordered the creation of a special commission to assess the needs of people following the earthquake.
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