Over 200 killed in Iran-Iraqi earthquake

In the latest update on the devastating 7.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked Iranian and Iraqi border on Sunday night, more than 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured.
The quake triggered landslides that hindered rescue efforts, officials said Monday.
The quake hit 30 kilometres (19 miles) southwest of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan at around 9.20 pm (1820 GMT) on Sunday, when many people would have been at home, the US Geological Survey said.
On Monday morning, Iran gave a provisional toll of more than 200 dead, while only six others were reported killed on the Iraq side of the border.
“There are 207 dead and around 1,700 injured”, all in Iran’s province of Kermanshah, Behnam Saidi, the deputy head of the Iranian government’s crisis unit set up to handle the response to the quake, told state television.
In Iraq, officials said the quake had killed six people in the northern province of Sulaimaniyah and injured around 150.
Footage posted on Twitter showed panicked people fleeing a building in Sulaimaniyah, as windows shattered at the moment the quake struck, while images from the nearby town of Darbandikhan showed major walls and concrete structures had collapsed.
In Sulaimaniyah, residents ran out onto the streets and some damage to property was reported, an AFP reporter there said.
“Four people were killed by the earthquake” in Darbandikhan, the town’s mayor Nasseh Moulla Hassan told AFP.
A child and an elderly person were killed in Kalar, according to the director of the hospital in the town about 70 kilometres (40 miles) south of Darbandikhan, and 105 people injured.
Around 450 people are reported to have been injured in the quake
The quake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of 25 kilometres, was felt for about 20 seconds in Baghdad, and for longer in other provinces of Iraq, AFP journalists said.
On the Iranian side of the border, the tremor shook several cities in the west of the country including Tabriz.
It was also felt in southeastern Turkey, “from Malatya to Van”, an AFP correspondent said. In the town of Diyarbakir, residents were reported to have fled their homes.
The quake struck along a 1,500 kilometre fault line between the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates, a belt extending through western Iran and into northeastern Iraq.
(NAN)