The Devastating 2022 M6.2 Afghanistan Earthquake: Challenges, Processes, and Implications.

On June 21st, a Mw6.2 earthquake struck the Afghan‐Pakistan‐border‐region, situated within the India‐Asia collision. Thousand thirty‐nine deaths were reported, making the earthquake the deadliest of 2022. We investigate the event's rupture processes by combining seismological and geodetic observations, aiming to understand what made it that fatal. Our Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar‐constrained slip‐model and regional moment‐tensor inversion, confirmed through field observations, reveal a sinistral rupture with maximum slip of 1.8 m at 5 km depth on a N20°E striking, sub‐vertical fault. We suggest that not only external factors (event‐time, building stock) but fault‐specific factors made the event excessively destructive. Surface rupture was favored by the rock foliation, coinciding with the fault strike. The distribution of Peak‐Ground‐Velocity was governed by the sub‐vertical fault. Maximum slip was large compared to other events globally and might have resulted in peak‐frequencies coinciding with resonance‐frequencies of the local buildings and demonstrates the devastating impact of moderate‐size earthquakes. Plain Language Summary: The June 2022 devastating M6.2 Afghanistan earthquake has caused a high depth toll, making it the deadliest earthquake of 2022. This is notable and partly intriguing as the earthquake size is much smaller than other events that happened in 2022. Therefore, we combine a range of geophysical, geodetic and geological methods to understand how exactly the subsurface ruptured during the earthquake. We suggest that it was a combination of the local circumstances (the event time, as it hit at night time, and the building stock) and the geometry of the rupture surface together with the local geology that made this event particularly deadly. More generally, this study shows the excessive hazard and impact caused by moderate‐size earthquakes. Key Points: We combine Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, moment tensor inversion, field mapping and Peak‐Ground‐Velocity (PGV) simulations to investigate the rupture processesThe event had a sinistral rupture with maximum slip of 1.8 m at 5 km depth on a N20°E striking, sub‐vertical faultCoincidence of large slip, fault geometry and alignment of rock foliation with strike enhanced PGV and the destructiveness of the event [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]