Islamabad: A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked southern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 30 persons and damaging several houses near the epicentre in Balochistan province. Abdul Qadoos, deputy speaker of the Baluchistan assembly, said that 30 people and at least 30 percent of houses in the impoverished Awaran district had been destroyed.

Following the earthquake in Pakistan, tremors were felt in New Delhi. Met department said latitude of the quake was 27 degree North and longitude was 65.7 degree East. The tremors were felt at around 5 pm. There were no immediate report of any casualties or damage.

Ten persons were killed and several houses and shops were damaged in Awaran area of Khuzdar district in Balochistan, located near the epicentre, media reports said. An emergency was declared in hospitals in Awaran. Two bodies were pulled out of the debris of a collapsed building. At least eight injured persons were taken to hospital, media reports said. Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik declared an emergency in Awaran, about seven to eight hours' drive from Quetta, the provincial capital.

The tremors that lasted almost a minute caused widespread panic in cities of Sindh province like Karachi and Hyderabad. People rushed out of their offices and homes in Karachi, the country's largest city, and other parts of Sindh and Balochistan provinces. The temblor, which had its epicentre 69 km from Awaran, was originally measured at 7.4 on the Richter Scale by the US Geological Survey which later revised it to 7.8. Pakistan's meteorological office gave the magnitude as 7.7. The quake struck at 4.29 pm Pakistani time at a depth of 23 kilometres. Reports said the quake was also felt in towns and cities like Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.