Iran-Iraq quake claims over 200 lives
MORE than 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a 7.3-magnitude earthquake shook the mountainous Iran-Iraq border, triggering landslides that hindered rescue efforts.
The quake hit 30km southwest of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan at around 9.20pm on Sunday, when many people would have been at home, the US Geological Survey said.
Yesterday morning, Iran gave a provisional toll of more than 200 dead, while only six others were reported killed on the Iraq side of the border.
“There are 207 dead and about 1 700 injured, all in Iran’s province of Kermanshah”, said Behnam Saidi, the deputy head of the Iranian government’s crisis unit set up to handle the response to the quake.
Kermanshah deputy governor Mojtaba Nikkerdar said authorities there were “in the process of setting up three emergency relief camps”.
Iran’s emergency services chief Pir Hossein Koolivand said it was “difficult to send rescue teams to the villages because the roads have been cut off due to landslides”.
The official Irna news agency said 30 Red Cross teams had been sent to the quake zone, parts of which had experienced power cuts.
In Iraq, officials said the quake had killed six people in the northern province of Sulaimaniyah and injured about 150.
Four people were killed by the earthquake in Darbandikhan, the town’s mayor Nasseh Moulla Hassan said. 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.
The quake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of 25km, was felt for about 20 seconds in Baghdad, and for longer in other provinces of Iraq. — AFP