Iranian authorities yesterday said that the number of injured people in a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in western Iran the previous night had risen to more than 700. No fatalities were reported from the temblor.
“We have had 729 injured, 700 of them have been treated and released ... some 18 people have been hospitalized,” Houshang Bazvand, governor of the western province of Kermanshah, told Iran’s state television.
Most of the injured people were immediately released from hospitals and sustained only slight injuries in the quake on Sunday night, the station said, adding that 37 remained hospitalized.
It said that more than 160 aftershocks occurred in the region, including two quakes stronger than magnitude 5.
Dozens of rescue teams and several rescue dogs were deployed to the region.
The TV showed footage of hospitalized people.
Hossein Rahnimi, the head of a local hospital, said that many of those injured also had panic attacks.
The earthquake struck western Iran near its border with Iraq, damaging buildings and sending fearful residents running into the streets.
It hit near the town of Sarpol-e Zahab in Kermanshah, which was the epicenter of an earthquake last year that killed more than 600 people.
That earthquake was magnitude 7.3 and also injured more than 9,000 people.
Sunday’s temblor also downed power lines and caused brief power outages into the night as temperatures hovered around 8°C.
The quake struck just after 8pm, meaning most were still awake at the time and able to quickly flee.
The region, nestled in the Zagros Mountains, largely rebuilt in recent decades after Iran and Iraq’s ruinous 1980s war, saw many buildings collapse or sustain major damage in last year’s quake.
Iran experiences an earthquake per day on average.
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