More than 130 people were killed in an earthquake that struck Nepal, according to what the authorities announced on Saturday. The earthquake occurred just before midnight on Friday, Saturday, local time, at a depth of 18 kilometers below the surface of the earth, near the sparsely populated area of Jumla, according to the US Geological Survey.

The earthquake was felt by residents of areas far from its epicenter, such as the Indian capital, New Delhi, located about 500 kilometers from the area where it occurred.

Interior Ministry spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai said, "92 people died in Jajarkot and 40 in Rukum," which were the two provinces most affected by the earthquake in the border province of Karnali.

National Police spokesman Cooper Katayat said that the authorities counted that more than 100 other people were injured in the two provinces.

Suresh Sonar, head of the local administration in the Jajarkot region in western Nepal, indicated in a statement to the agency that the authorities are trying to calculate the damage.

He added, "There are homes damaged and people injured, but we are trying to obtain more details."

The National Seismological Center in Nepal stated that the earthquake occurred at 11:47 pm (18:02 GMT) in the Jajarkot region, which is located about 500 kilometers west of the capital, Kathmandu.

Officials fear the death toll could rise because they were unable to contact the mountainous area near the epicenter, located 500 kilometers west of the capital, Kathmandu, where tremors were also felt. The population of this region is 190 thousand people, and its villages are spread in the remote hills.

Footage published by local media showed the dilapidated facades of multi-storey houses.

Citizens said that residents felt the tremors in neighboring and distant areas such as Kathmandu.

Social media users in India reported that they felt the earthquake in the northern cities of Lucknow and Patna.

Six people died in November 2022 when a 5.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Doti area near Gamla.

In 2015, two earthquakes that struck Nepal killed about nine thousand people, turned entire cities, centuries-old temples and other historical sites into rubble, and destroyed more than a million homes, costing the economy six billion dollars.