Rescue teams were on their way to remote border regions between Iran and Pakistan on Tuesday night, after a powerful earthquake struck.
Though tremors were felt across the Gulf region, Pakistan and well into north-west India after the quake happened at 3.14pm (11.44am UK time), local authorities said there were only limited casualties. However, it was the biggest earthquake in Iran for 40 years and there were fears of massive casualties yet to be reported.
A Pakistani military official said his initial information was that 34 people had been killed and 80 injured in the country, saying all of the dead and injured so far were in the town of Mashkal.
The US Geological Survey said it had measured the earthquake at magnitude 7.8 and gave its location at 50 miles east-south-east of the town of Khash, in Iran. Though the area is largely desert and mountains, there are several major cities, including Zahedan, 125 miles away, which has more than half a million inhabitants.
One Iranian told the Guardian that the small town of Hiduj, which had a population of around 1,000 according to a 2006 census, had been badly damaged.
The Iranian semi-official news agency Fars quoted Tehran University's geophysics centre as saying the quake had hit the south-eastern city of Saravan in Sistan and Baluchistan province at 3.14pm and initially reported that it had killed at least 40 people. However, TV stations later downgraded their estimate to "several feared dead".
Speaking to the Iranian Students News Agency (Isna), Hatam Naroee, the governor of Sistan and Baluchistan province, reported no fatalities.
"Except for a limited number of villages, telecommunication services and electricity wires and water pipelines of other villages close to the epicentre are safe," he said, explaining that the region was sparsely populated.
An official from Iran's Red Crescent Society told Isna that 22 search and rescue teams, including 17 rescue dogs, had been dispatched to the region.
On the Pakistan side, the situation also seemed confused.
"We have reports of three deaths near the Pakistan-Iran border in Mash Khel area of Panjgore district," said a local government official, requesting anonymity.
The official said about 40 people had been injured when wooden roofs and mud walls collapsed. The thinly populated district is one of Pakistan's most underdeveloped, with minimal telecommunication and infrastructure.
Close to magnitude 8 means a powerful quake on a level with the one that killed an estimated 68,000 people in Sichuan province, China, in 2008.
Experts said the depth of the earthquake may have saved many lives.
"The earthquake in Iran was strong but fortunately its source was quite deep, about 80km [50 miles] ... the intensity of the shaking was less than it would have been for a shallower earthquake of the same magnitude," said Dr David Rothery, chair of the Open University's volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis course.
Saleh Mangi, from the NGO Plan International, said he was in a meeting with staff in an office in Thatta, around 65 miles from the Pakistani port city of Karachi, when the ground shook.
"People are afraid to go back to their homes and the government is telling fishing communities not to go into the sea as that would be very dangerous," he said.
There was concern that facilities associated with Iran's nuclear programme might have been affected. But the Bushehr nuclear power plant was not damaged, said an official at Atomstroyexport, the Russian firm that built the plant.
Wednesday 17 April 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/17/rescuers-earthquake-iran-pakistan-border
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