Quakes kill five in southern Iran
TEHRAN: A series of strong earthquakes rocked southern Iran on Saturday, killing at least five people and causing damage to dozens of buildings, state media reported.
The quakes, including two of magnitude 6.0, struck west of the major port city of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan province, the US Geological Survey said.
The first rattled an area north of the town of Dezhgan shortly after 2:00am local time, before a 5.7 tremor hit two hours later followed quickly by the second 6.0 magnitude quake, said the USGS. Hormozgan governor Mehdi Dousti said five people were killed, as cited by the official news agency IRNA. Dousti said most of the damage occurred in the village of Sayeh Khosh, close to the epicentre.
State television said 49 people were injured and showed video footage of residential buildings reduced to rubble in Sayeh Khosh, which was plunged into darkness in a power outage. Ambulances and other vehicles tried to navigate roads covered in debris as shocked residents took to the streets or tried to recover items from their flattened homes.
People also spent the night outdoors in the provincial capital Bandar Abbas, with a population of more than 500,000, located about 100 kilometres east of the epicentres, where long queues formed in front of gas stations, state media reported.
The Red Crescent said in the morning that search and rescue operations were nearly over.
“We are concentrating on housing the victims of the earthquake,” Dousti told television, adding that half of Sayeh Khosh was destroyed.
Iran sits astride the boundaries of several major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity.
The Islamic republic’s deadliest quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people in the north, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless. In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake in southeastern Iran levelled the ancient mud- brick city of Bam and killed at least 31,000 people.