Quake rescue ends; 450 killed

ANKARA: Iran said yesterday that rescue operations had ended in areas hit by a powerful weekend earthquake that killed at least 450 people and injured thousands of others, state television reported.

Sunday’s 7.3magnitude earthquake struck villages and towns in the mountainous area of Kermanshah province that borders Iraq while many people were at home asleep. At least 14 provinces in Iran were affected.

State television said thousands were huddling in makeshift camps while many others spent a second night in the open for fear of more tremors to come after some 193 aftershocks.

Television showed footage of rescue workers frantically combing through the rubble of dozens of villages immediately after the quake. But Iranian officials said the chances of finding any more survivors were extremely low.

Hospitals in nearby provinces took in many of the injured, state television said, while hundreds of critically injured people were dispatched to hospitals in Teheran.

Iran’s Red Crescent said emergency shelters had been given to thousands of homeless people, but lack of water and electricity as well as blocked roads in some areas hindered aid supply efforts.

Local authorities said traffic chaos on roads further hampered the flow of aid to quakehit areas.

More than 30,000 houses in the area were damaged and at least two villages were completely destroyed, Iranian authorities said.

‘‘More people will die because of cold,’’ Rojan Meshkat (38) in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj told Reuters by telephone.

The quake, centered in Penjwin in Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah province in the Kurdistan region, killed at least six people in Iraq and injured more than 68 others. In northern Iraq’s Kurdish districts, seven were killed and 325 wounded.