MIR GADKHEL, AFGHANISTAN - Dozens of people were feared dead and scores of houses destroyed by an earthquake in eastern Afghanistan early on Friday, villagers and a Reuters eyewitness said.

A Reuters Television cameraman in the village of Mir Gadkhel said villagers were scrambling through rubble of flattened houses to recover bodies and rescue the injured after the quake, which struck before dawn.

"Three of my family members were killed and seven are injured. I think about 40 people have died. Hundreds of houses have been destroyed," villager Gul Mohammad said in the village, about 45 km west of the Afghan city of Jalalabad.