A 5.9 magnitude earthquake killed three people and injured more than 800, most of them lightly, on Saturday evening in a mountainous region of northwestern Iran, near the border with Turkey.
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According to the Seismological Center of Tehran University, the earthquake struck at 9:44 p.m. local time (1814 GMT) the city of Khoy in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province (northwest).
Three people were killed while the number of injured was estimated at 816 injured by the governor of the province, Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian, quoted by the Irna agency. A previous report, given overnight, reported two dead and 580 injured.
“Currently, 30 people are hospitalized, the other injured have been discharged after receiving outpatient treatment,” Red Crescent chief Pirhossein Kolivand announced on television.
Search and rescue operations for victims, carried out with the help of rescue groups from neighboring provinces, have ended, while Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi traveled to Khoy to monitor the situation, clarified Irna.
Homes in 70 villages have been damaged by 20 to 80 percent and the damage in urban areas is greater than in previous earthquakes to hit the region, said Motamedian.
More than 20 aftershocks caused panic among the inhabitants, who left their homes despite the winter conditions.
Footage released by Iranian media shows people sitting around fires under blankets as a wave of snow hits the northwest.
This region is regularly hit by earthquakes, such as the 5.8 magnitude earthquake which, on January 8, injured several hundred people near Khoy.
In February 2020, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake hit the village of Habash-e Olya and killed at least nine people across the border in Turkey.
Iran is at the meeting of several tectonic plates and experiences strong seismic activity.
The deadliest earthquake ever recorded in Iran, of magnitude 7.4, occurred in 1990, killing 40,000 in the north of the country and injuring 30,000. Half a million people were then left homeless.