Iranian quake survivors seek shelter
Thousands of homeless in western region face bitter cold outdoors
Thousands of homeless Iranians sought shelter from bitter cold yesterday as the country marked a day of mourning for the over 530 killed in the 7.3-magnitude quake that struck a mountainous region spanning the IranIraq border late Sunday.
Thousands of homes were destroyed in the quake, which rocked a region spanning Iran’s western province of Kermanshah and neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan.
On Tuesday, residents who had fled their homes awoke from a second night in the cold outdoors as authorities struggled to get aid into the quake zone.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited the city of Kermanshah and promised the government would move swiftly to help those left homeless by the disaster.
Around 12,000 Iranian homes were destroyed and another 15,000 damaged in the quake, according to official estimates.
Seven towns and nearly 2,000 villages were damaged, authorities said, and several villages were completely wiped off the map.
The toll in Iran stood at 530 dead and 8,000 injured, while across the border in more sparsely populated areas of Iraq, the health ministry said eight people had died and several hundred were injured. Iraq’s Red Crescent put the toll at nine dead.
On Tuesday, Iran marked a day of mourning, with a black banner adorning the corner of images of the disaster broadcast by state television to the tune of Sad Lisa by British singer Yousuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens.
“Search operations are reaching their end, with teams constantly monitoring the situation to know if there are still people to extract from the rubble,” Behnam Saidi, the spokesman for a crisis unit set up to handle the response to the quake, told state television. “The most urgent need is to provide solutions for heating, housing and food,” Pir Hossein Koolivand, the head of national rescue services, told state television.