Almost all the women and children of a remote settlement were trapped under debris, while most of the men who were in farms as the quakes struck, escaped,

As many as 100 people are feared dead after two earthquakes triggered landslides that buried more than 25 houses in a remote mountainous region of northern Afghanistan on Monday, provincial officials said on Tuesday.

Officials said that almost all the women and children of the 25 destroyed houses of the remote settlement have been trapped under the debrissince Monday and are feared dead.

The men were out in their farms during the quakes, and so perhaps escaped, they said.

The two quakes of 5.4 and 5.7 magnitudes struck the mountainous region, bringing a massive slide of mud and rocks that buried houses so deep in the remote mountain village of Sayi Hazara that rescuers gave up trying to use shovels to dig through the buried buildings, said Jawed Basharat, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.

There were no visible signs of the buildings underneath. 'We need bulldozers or other machinery to remove all this earth and get the bodies out, or the survivors if there are any,' Basharat said.

They knew how many houses were buried only from information provided by area residents, who said between 25 and 30 houses disappeared in the landslide.

The US Geological Survey said the two shallow quakes hit the regi.