CAIRO (voa) – The death toll from an earthquake in northwestern Iran is reported to have risen to 500, with another 1,500 people believed injured. The quake has devastated a series of villages.
The rumblings of the quake that rocked Iran’s Qazvin province Saturday may have exceeded 6.0 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was in the town of Bou’in Zahra, 225 kilometers west of the capital, Tehran, where the reverberations also were felt.
Majid Shalviri, head of the provincial Red Crescent Society, said that most of the deaths occurred in Qazvin province. The earthquake and several aftershocks were also reported to have hit other provinces in the north, central and western parts of the country.
Mohamed Hossien Parvinian, deputy governor of Qazvin province, told Iran’s official news agency that 10 villages in the province suffered damage ranging between 50 and 100 percent.
Iranian President Mohamed Khatami sent a condolence message over state-run television and called on the Interior Ministry to cooperate with other agencies in speeding assistance to the victims.
Villagers look on as a bulldozer searches for bodies in Abdareh village, Qazvin province
Rescue workers have already been dispatched, but many of the affected locations are in rural and possibly hard to reach areas.
Earlier, the official news agency reported the quake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, but the U.S. Geological Survey has reported a magnitude of 6.3
Nearly 40 years ago an earthquake struck the same area in Iran, killing more than 12,000 people and demolishing 124 villages. Iran lies on seismic fault lines where tremors are a regular occurrence.
