Struggle to reach cut-off villages

Iranian rescue teams were struggling to reach isolated villages cut off by landslides after a 7.3 magnitude earthquake killed more than 400 people and injured almost 7000.

The powerful earthquake struck the Iran-Iraq border region, shaking the Middle East as far as Israel and Turkey, but the worst of the devastation hit western Iran.

Iran said at least 407 people had been killed but the death toll was expected to rise as rescuers reached more remote parts of the mountainous Kermanshah province. Another 6700 people were injured.

At least seven people were killed in Iraq’s Kurdish region and more than 300 were reportedly taken to hospital with injuries.

The earthquake was the worst in Iran since 2005, when 612 people were killed in the country’s south east. It was also the deadliest earthquake of 2017, overtaking the 369 people killed in Mexico in September.

Iran’s Government said it was mobilising the army, militia forces and Revolutionary Guard Corps to help with relief efforts but as the sun set rescuers were still struggling to reach parts of the disaster zone.

Aid workers used rescue dogs and heat sensors to try to find those trapped inside collapsed buildings while helicopters and heavy construction equipment were brought in. More than 200 people were reportedly killed in Sarpol-e Zahab, a city of around 34,000 people near the Iraqi border. Photographs from the scene showed buildings collapsed and a mother weeping in the street as she held the body of her young daughter. Another woman and her baby were pulled from rubble.

In a video posted online, a resident said soldiers were working to help people without gloves or special equipment and there was no sign of rescue teams. “There has been no help yet, neither food nor water, no clothing, no tents, there is nothing,” said another man. “Our electricity, water, gas, phone lines are out, everything is completely out, the whole city has been destroyed.”