The 5.2 magnitude quake had its epicentre in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan, about 300 km (190 miles) north of the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Pakistan's Meteorological Office said.

The quake was felt in Peshawar, as well as in the towns of Dir, Chitral, Mansehra as well as the capital Islamabad, it said.

Mansehra and Islamabad both suffered damage in the catastrophic 7.6 magnitude earthquake that hit northern Pakistan on Oct. 8, killing more than 73,000 people.

More than 1,750 aftershocks have been recorded since then and meteorological officials expect more will be felt until May.

On Friday, an aftershock measuring 5.2 killed one man and injured 16 people in Pakistani Kashmir, one of the regions worst hit by the October disaster.

Five people were injured and two were missing after the tornado cut a path more than 16 miles wide through the town of Sedalia, said Rusty Kahrs, Pettis County presiding commissioner.

Storms rolled through northeastern Kansas earlier in the day with fierce winds that lifted a cargo container off the airfield at the Kansas City International Airport, authorities said. At the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport in Kansas City, Mo., some private airplanes tied down on the airfield were "spun around," spokesman Joe McBride said.

The University of Kansas in Lawrence canceled Monday's classes after 60 percent of its buildings were damaged by the storm.

The storms followed powerful tornadoes that ripped across southern Missouri and southern Illinois Saturday night. They destroyed homes along a path of more than 20 miles and killed a married couple whose pickup truck was blown off a rural road about 80 miles south of St. Louis, officials said.

Four people were killed in a traffic pileup on a smoke-filled highway 65 kilometers east of Amarillo.

Three more people died northeast of Amarillo, including two who were caught running to escape a grass fire that destroyed their home, said local officials.

Evacuation orders were issued Sunday for at least seven towns.

"This is probably one of the biggest fire days in Texas history," said Warren Bielenberg, a spokesman for the Texas Forest Service.

The area around Amarillo has seen 76 millimetres of rain since February, about 25 millimetres below normal averages. No rain is expected in the next seven days.

A separate 28,000-hectare grass fire is burning in southeastern New Mexico, promting state officials to order 200 people to leave their homes.

Earlier this winter, wildfires in the state charred thousands of hectares and killed three people.

Morakot Areeya, head of a astronomy learning center, was quotedon Monday by the Bangkok Post as saying that he saw a burning object speeding across the sky at about 6:20 p.m. (1120 GMT) on March 4 in Ayutthaya's Nakhon Si Ayutthaya district. Some other witnesses also reported they have seen the unidentified object that night.

Worawit Thanwuttibandit, a cosmic adviser to the Thai Astronomical Society, said the object might have been a large meteor.

Dr Sarun Posayajinda, deputy director-general of the National Astronomical Research Institute, said it was possible that the object was some kind of space debris which had burst into flames on entering the earth's atmosphere.

Morakot took a photograph of the object, which he first thought was an airplane that had burst into flames. However, he was surprised to see the object continue to streak across the sky in an easterly direction before disappearing from sight.

Morakot said it did not appear that the object had struck the earth, rather it had traveled almost horizontally. He said some locals felt the object may have been some form of UFO.

"It is strange because after contacting a number of local amateur radio hams, none had learnt of any air crashes in the area," Morakot said