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Dozens killed by earthquake in Iran/Iraq border region More than 130 killed by earthquake in Iran/Iraq border region
(about 1 hour later)
A powerful earthquake struck the region along the border between Iran and Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 67 people and injuring 300 in Iran, an Iranian official has said. More than 130 people have been killed in Iran and Iraq after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit the border region between the two countries, state media said.
Iranian state TV had initially reported six deaths and 200 injuries inside Iraq, though there was no official comment from Iraq’s government. As rescuers stepped up efforts through the night to find people trapped in collapsed buildings, the deputy governor of Iran’s Kermanshah province on the Iraqi border told state television that at least 129 were dead and that the toll would rise..
The US Geological Survey said the quake was centred 19 miles (31km) outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja and was measured as magnitude 7.2. “There are still people under the rubble. We hope the number of dead and injured won’t rise too much, but it will rise,” Mojtaba Nikkerdar said.
The Islamic Republic of Iran News Network quoted the head of the country’s emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand, as saying at least 61 had been killed and 300 injured on Iran’s side of the border. More than 60 of the victims were in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 15km (10 miles) from the border.
Six others were reported dead on the Iraq side of the border. Officials in Iraq reported that at least six people had died and 50 injured.
“We are in the process of setting up three emergency relief camps,” said Mojtaba Nikkerdar, the deputy governor of Iran’s Kermanshah province. The US Geological Survey said the quake measured magnitude 7.3, while an Iraqi meteorology official put its magnitude at 6.5 with the epicentre in Penjwin in Sulaimaniyah province in the Kurdistan region close to the main border crossing with Iran.
More casualties are expected from neighbouring countries – reports said the quake was felt as far away as Israel. The quake struck at around 9.20pm local time on Sunday, with tremors felt 350km away in Baghdad and as far as south-eastern Turkey.
Iranian state TV said that Iraqi officials reported at least six people dead inside Iraq, along with more than 50 people injured in Sulaymaniyah province and about 150 in Khanaquin city. No reports were immediately available from Iraq’s government. The electricity was cut off in several Iranian and Iraqi cities, and fears of aftershocks sent thousands of people in both countries out onto the streets and parks in cold weather.
Koulivand earlier told a local television station that the earthquake knocked out electricity in Iran’s western cities of Mehran and Ilam. He also said 35 rescue teams were providing assistance. “The night has made it difficult for helicopters to fly to the affected areas and some roads are also cut off... we are worried about remote villages,” Iranian interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said in an interview on state television.
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, in a phone call with the interior ministry, emphasised the need for maximum effort from officials. The building was just dancing in the air.
Iranian social media was abuzz on Sunday night with posts of people evacuating their homes, particularly in Kermanshah and Ghasr-e Shirin. Many houses in rural parts of the province are made of mud bricks and are known to crumble easily in the earthquake-prone region.
The semi-official Iranian ILNA news agency said at least 14 provinces in Iran had been affected by the earthquake. On the Iraqi side, the most extensive damage was in the town of Darbandikhan, 75km east of the city of Sulaimaniyah in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, where the mayor told AFP that four people had died.
Officials announced that schools in Kermanshah and Ilam provinces would be closed on Monday because of the tremor. A child and an elderly person were killed in Kalar, according to the director of the hospital in the town about 70km south of Darbandikhan, and 105 people injured, AFP said.
Iran sits on many major fault lines and is prone to near-daily quakes. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people. Kurdish health minister Rekawt Hama Rasheed told Reuters the situation in Darbandikhan was “very critical”. The district’s main hospital was severely damaged and had no power, Rasheed said, so the injured were being taken to Sulaimaniyah for treatment. There was extensive structural damage to buildings and homes.
In Halabja, local officials said a 12-year-old boy died from an electric shock when an electric cable fell during the earthquake.
Many residents in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, rushed out of houses and tall buildings in panic.
“I was sitting with my kids having dinner and suddenly the building was just dancing in the air,” said Majida Ameer, who ran out of her building in the capital’s Salihiya district with her three children. “I thought at first that it was a huge bomb. But then I heard everyone around me screaming: ‘Earthquake!’”