Dozens killed in earthquake on Iran border

SCORES of people have been killed and hundreds injured after a strong earthquake shook the Iran-iraq border region yesterday.

The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.3 event was centred 20 miles south-west of Halabja, near the north-eastern border with Iran.

At least 61 people were killed and 300 injured in Iran, according to state television. Many of the victims were in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 10 miles from the border.

In Iraq, at least six people died and 200 were injured. 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 lives 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!’”

There were similar scenes in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, and across other cities in northern Iraq, close to the quake’s epicentre.

On the Iraqi side, the most extensive damage was in the town of Darbandikhan, 47 miles east of the city of Sulaimaniyah in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.

“The situation there is very critical,” said Rekawt Hama Rasheed, the Kurdish Health Minister, who revealed that the district’s main hospital was severely damaged and had no power.