Hundreds trapped after earthquake destroys villages in Iran
Rescue teams managed to pull all survivors from under the rubble today after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck a remote area in south-eastern Iran, killing seven and injuring 33 people.
Iranian state TV said the strong quake hit Hosseinabad, a small town of a few hundred residents in the sparsely populated Chah Malek region in the country's south-east late yesterday.
Mahmoud Mozaffar, head of the rescue department of Iran's Red Crescent, told state TV that four of the fatalities were schoolchildren, three of them girls. He said the rescue operation ended at about noon today and that no more fatalities were expected.
Mohammad Barzang, governor of Rigan, another small town in the stricken area, said collapsed houses in three remote villages had buried dozens under the rubble.
Barzang said relief teams were dispatched to the area and that more than 2,000 families needed tents to live in since their houses had been damaged.
The area is not far from the historical city of Bam, site of a devastating 2003 earthquake of similar strength that killed more than 26,000 people.
Telephone contacts with the stricken area were cut and the water supply system was badly affected but electricity was restored, according to TV reports. The official IRNA news agency said as many as 40 aftershocks rocked the region following the quake, including one magnitude 5 tremor.
Even moderate quakes have killed thousands of people in the past in the Iranian countryside, where houses are often built of earthen bricks. Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. It experiences at least one slight earthquake every day on average.
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