At least 32 people were injured when an earthquake jolted the city of Quetta before dawn on Sunday, most of them after jumping out of windows in panic, officials said.
The quake measuring 4.7 on the Richter Scale shook Quetta and other parts of Balochistan province at around 1:12 am, a seismology department official said.
Its epicenter was some 200 kilometers north of Quetta, near the Afghan border.
"It was a mild earthquake but the tremors, which lasted several seconds, woke up the people from their sleep," the official said.
"The tremors lasted some 20 seconds," another official, Najeeb Ahmed from the local Meteorological Department, told AFP.
Residents said the quake was accompanied a prolonged rumbling sound which triggered panic.
Youths fired pistols and Kalashnikov rifles into the air to alert people, while announcements from mosques urged people to leave their homes.
In the ensuing panic, many people jumped out of the windows or from the roofs of buildings, residents and officials said.
"Twenty people with minor injuries were brought to the Sandeman Hospital and only two of them with fractured limbs have been admitted," Dr Mohammad Anwar told AFP.
Officials said about a dozen more people received medical treatment in other hospitals but there were no fatalities.
Four of the injured were students who jumped from a window of their hostel, a spokesman for the private Edhi Welfare Trust told AFP.
"Four students of Balochistan University panicked and jumped from the second floor of their hostel," the spokesman said.
"The legs of two students were broken," he said, adding others had minor injuries on wrist and shoulders.
Many people spent the rest of the night in open areas.
Quetta, which lies in the seismic zone, was ruined in a massive earthquake in 1935 when more than 30,000 people were killed.
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