Magnitude 5.6 Earthquake Depth 121 km Strikes Hindu Kush Region, Afghanistan on 15th April 2025

The eastern end of the Hindu Kush in the north merges with the Karakoram Range. Towards its southern end, it connects with the White Mountains near the Kabul River. It divides the valley of the Amu Darya (the ancient Oxus) to the north from the Indus River valley to the south. The range has numerous high snow-capped peaks, with the highest point being Tirich Mir or Terichmir at 7,708 metres (25,289 ft) in the Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

The Hindu Kush range region was a historically significant center of Buddhism, with sites such as the Bamiyan Buddhas. The range and communities settled in it hosted ancient monasteries, important trade networks and travellers between Central Asia and South Asia. While the vast majority of the region has been majority-Muslim for several centuries now, certain portions of the Hindu Kush only became Islamized relatively recently, such as Kafiristan, which retained ancient polytheistic beliefs until the 19th century when it was converted to Islam by the Durrani Empire and renamed Nuristan (“land of light”). The Hindu Kush range has also been the passageway for invasions of the Indian subcontinent, and continues to be important to contemporary warfare in Afghanistan.

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