At least 450 dead along Iraq-Iran border magnitude after 7.3 earthquake
At least 450 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a 7.3-magnitude earthquake shook the mountainous Iran-Iraq border, triggering landslides that were hindering rescue efforts, officials said on Monday.
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Footage posted on Twitter showed panicked people fleeing a building in Sulaimaniyah, northern Iraq, as windows shattered at the moment the quake struck late Sunday, while images from the nearby town of Darbandikhan showed major walls and concrete structures had collapsed.
"We are in the process of setting up three emergency relief camps," said Mojtaba Nikkerdar, the deputy governor of Iran's Kermanshah province.
Iran is especially prone to almost daily earthquakes because it sits astride many fault lines. A magnitude 6.6 devastated the historic city of Bam in 2003, killing about 26,000 people. Many local houses there are made of mud bricks, which can crumble easily.
"Four people were killed by the earthquake" in Darbandikhan, the Iraqi town's mayor, Nasseh Moulla Hassan, told AFP. Two more people were killed in Kalar, according to the director of the hospital in the town about 70km south of Darbandikhan. At least 150 were injured, Iraqi officials said.
The quake was felt in several Iranian provinces bordering Iraq .
The temblor was centred 32km southwest of Halabja, Iraq, near the northeastern border with Iran, the US Geological Survey said. It struck the mountainous area of Sulaimaniyah province at 9:18 pm local time (1818 GMT) at a depth of 33.9km, the monitor said.
It was felt for about 20 seconds in Baghdad, and sometimes for longer in other provinces of Iraq.
In the province of Sulaimaniyah, located in Iraq's Kurdistan region, residents ran out onto the streets at the time of the quake and some property damage was recorded, an AFP reporter said.
In Iran, the ISNA news agency said that the earthquake was felt in several cities in the west of the country including Tabriz.
Iranian state television said the quake was felt in numerous cities in the country and had damaged eight villages, including knocking out electricity in many of them.
The semi-official Iranian ILNA news agency reported that at least 14 provinces had been impacted by the earthquake.
Iranian social media was abuzz with posts of people evacuating their homes, especially from the cities of Ghasr-e Shirin - near the Iraqi border - and Kermanshah, the Guardian reported.
Esmail Najar, head of Iran's National Disaster Management Organization, said: “Some injured people might be buried under the rubble in Ghasr-e Shirin”.
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... there have been landslides."
It added that 30 aid teams had been sent to the quake zone, parts of which had experienced power cuts.
In southeastern Turkey, the earthquake was felt "from Malatya to Van", an AFP correspondent said. In the town of Diyarbakir, residents also left their homes before returning.
