Big quake in Afghanistan and Pakistan kills at least 135

A major earthquake struck the remote Afghan northeast on Monday, killing at least 135 people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan and sending shock waves as far as New Delhi, officials said.

The death toll could climb because communications were down in much of the rugged Hindu Kush mountain range area where the quake was centered.

Reports of deaths poured in from different areas of both countries.

In one of the worst single incidents, a panicked evacuation at girls' school killed at least 12 students in the Afghan province of Takhar.

"They fell under the feet of other students," said Abdul Razaq Zinda, provincial head of the Afghan National Disaster Management Agency, who reported heavy damage in Takhar.

SEE ALSO:Guatemalan comedian wins presidency in landslide

Shockwaves were felt in northern India and in Pakistan, where hundreds of people ran out of buildings as the ground rolled beneath them.

"We were very scared ... We saw people leaving buildings, and we were remembering our God," Pakistani journalist Zubair Khan said by telephone from the Swat Valley northwest of the capital, Islamabad.

"I was in my car, and when I stopped my car, the car itself was shaking as if someone was pushing it back and forth."

The quake was 213 km (132 miles) deep and centered 254 km (158 miles) northeast of Kabul in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially measured the quake's intensity at 7.7 then revised it down to 7.5.

Just over a decade ago, a 7.6 magnitude quake in another part of northern Pakistan killed about 75,000 people.

In Afghanistan, a total of 33 were reported dead on Monday. In addition to the 12 schoolgirls in Takhar, seven people died in the eastern province of Nangarhar, two in Nuristan province in the northeast, three in eastern Kunar province and nine in Badakhshan, officials said.

See photos of the quake:

PHONES DOWN

In Pakistan, 102 deaths were reported by early evening, most in northern and northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan, officials told Reuters.

Particularly hard-hit in Pakistan was the northern area of Chitral, where 20 people were killed, police official Shah Jehan said. The death toll was likely to rise because so many areas were cut off from communications, he said.

Journalist Gul Hammad Farooqi, 47, said his house had collapsed. "I was thrown from one side of the road to the other by the strength of the earthquake. I've never experienced anything like it," he said.

"There is a great deal of destruction here, and my house has collapsed, but thankfully my children and I escaped."

Further south, the city of Peshawar reported two deaths but at least 150 injured people were being treated at the city's main hospital, the provincial health chief said.

ALSO READ: Indonesia arrests Indian man wanted in murders of 20 women

In Afghanistan, international aid agencies working in northern areas reported that cell phone coverage in the affected areas remained down in the hours after the initial quake.

"The problem is we just don't know. A lot of the phone lines are still down," said Scott Anderson, deputy head of office for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Kabul.

Badakhshan provincial governor Shah Waliullah Adib said about 400 houses were destroyed but he had no figures on casualties.

"Right now we are collecting information," he said.

The earthquake struck almost exactly six months after Nepal suffered its worst quake on record on April 25. Including the toll from a major aftershock in May, 9,000 people lost their lives and 900,000 homes were damaged or destroyed there.

The Hindu Kush mountain region is seismically active, with earthquakes the result of the Indian subcontinent driving into and under the Eurasian landmass. Sudden tectonic shifts can cause enormous and destructive releases of energy.

More from AOL.com:

Former Marine reveals jaw-dropping transgender transformation
Patricia to spread flood threat from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle on Monday
Woman faces 2nd-degree murder charges in parade crash