DUSHANBE, Tajikistan— About 20,000 people in Tajikistan were left homeless by an earthquake that hit a mountainous region of the impoverished Central Asian nation, officials said Sunday.
No deaths were reported after the magnitude 5.1 quake struck the Pamir Mountains on Saturday, the Emergency Situations and Civil Defense Committee said.
The temblor leveled hundreds of mud-brick houses in several villages in the Gorno-Badakhshansky region. The quake also cut electricity supplies and communications and blocked the main road between the regional center, the town of Vanch, and nearby villages.
Earthquakes are fairly common in the mountains of Tajikistan, one of the poorest of the former Soviet nations. (AP)