BBC Breakfast halted for 'unprecedented' breaking news as host delivers devastating alert

BBC Breakfast was paused for a devastating breaking news alert as host Jon Kay delivered the latest updates for viewers. A magnitude 6.0 earthquake has struck eastern Afghanistan, with hundreds of people feared dead. BBC correspondent Yogita Limaye was live in Kabul to deliver the "unprecedented" news.

Limaye explained: "The Taliban government is saying they've heard of villages that have been completely destroyed, and that masses of people are feared trapped under the rubble. But this is mountainous terrain, it's extremely challenging to reach even in the best of times, so that's really hampering rescue and relief operations."

She explained: "We know that the Taliban government is operating helicopters to try and get people out of there, but the scale of the earthquake, the scale of the impact and the dead, it will be a while before we can truly get a sense of that.

"What's happened was into the night and into this morning, we've had more aftershocks as well. The earthquake is hitting Afghanistan at a time when this country is already grappling with severe drought in more than half of its provinces, and it's experiencing what the UN describes as an unprecedented crisis of hunger."

limaye continued: "The biggest medical facility close to the epicentre of the earthquake is the Jalalabad Regional Hospital and we've been there last year. Even then when it wasn't dealing with a disaster, it was completely overstretched, more than 1000 people just waiting in the complex to try to see a doctor.

"It is really going to struggle with hundreds more brought in because of the earthquake."