Tehran, Nov 14 (AP) Rescuers dug with their bare handsMonday through the debris of buildings felled by an earthquakethat killed more than 430 people in the border region of Iranand Iraq, with nearly all the casualties occurring in an arearebuilt after their ruinous 1980s war.
The magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck Sunday at 9:48 p.m.
Iran time, just as people were going to bed. The worst damageappeared to be in the Kurdish town of Sarpol-e-Zahab in thewestern Iranian province of Kermanshah, which sits in theZagros Mountains that divide the two countries.
Residents fled without time to grab their possessions asapartment complexes collapsed into rubble. Outside walls ofsome buildings were sheared off, power and water lines weresevered, and telephone service was disrupted.
Residents dug frantically through wrecked buildings forsurvivors as they wailed. Firefighters from Tehran joinedother rescuers in the desperate search, using dogs to inspectthe rubble.
The hospital in Sarpol-e-Zahab was heavily damaged, andthe army set up field hospitals, although many of the injuredwere moved to other cities, including Tehran.
The quake also damaged an army garrison and buildings inthe border city and killed an unspecified number of soldiers,according to reports.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei immediatelydispatched all government and military forces to aid thoseaffected.
Many of the heavily damaged complexes in Sarpol-e-Zahabwere part of construction projects under former hard-linePresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The newly homeless sleptoutside in cold, huddled around makeshift fires for warmth,wrapped in blankets as were the dead.
The quake killed 430 people in Iran and injured 7,156,the state-run IRNA news agency reported Tuesday. Most of theinjuries were minor with fewer than 1,000 still hospitalized,Iran's crisis management headquarters spokesman Behnam Saeeditold state TV.
The official death toll came from provincial forensicauthorities based on death certificates issued. Some reportssaid unauthorized burials without certification could mean thedeath toll was actually higher.
The quake was centered about 19 miles (31 kilometers)outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja, according to the USGeological Survey, and struck 14.4 miles (23.2 kilometers)below the surface, a somewhat shallow depth that can causebroader damage.
The quake caused Dubai's skyscrapers to sway and could befelt 1,060 kilometers (660 miles) away on the Mediterraneancoast.
Seven deaths occurred in Iraq and 535 people wereinjured, all in the country's northern, semiautonomous Kurdishregion, according to its Interior Ministry.
The disparity in casualty tolls immediately drewquestions from Iranians, especially because so much of thetown was new.
Kokab Fard, a 49-year-old housewife in Sarpol-e-Zahab,said she could only flee empty-handed when her apartmentcomplex collapsed.
"Immediately after I managed to get out, the buildingcollapsed," Fard said. "I have no access to my belongings."Reza Mohammadi, 51, said he and his family ran into the alleyfollowing the first shock.
"I tried to get back to pick some stuff, but it totallycollapsed in the second wave," Mohammadi said.
Khamenei offered his condolences as President HassanRouhani's office said Iran's elected leader would tour thedamaged areas Tuesday, which was declared a national day ofmourning. Authorities also set up relief camps and hundredslined up to donate blood in Tehran, though some on state TVcomplained about the slowness of aid coming.
Sarpol-e-Zahab fell to the troops of Iraqi dictatorSaddam Hussein during his 1980 invasion of Iran, which sparkedthe eight-year war between the two countries that killed 1million people.
Though clawed back by Iran seven months later, the arearemained a war zone that suffered through Saddam's missileattacks and chemical weapons.
After the war, Iran began rebuilding the town. It alsowas part of Ahmadinejad's low-income housing project, whichaided the Holocaust-questioning hard-liner's populistcredentials but also saw cheap construction.
Under the plan dubbed as Mehr or "kindness" in Farsi,some 2 million units were built in Iran, including hundreds inSarpol-e Zahab. Many criticized the plan, warning that thelow-quality construction could lead to a disaster.
"Before its 10-year anniversary, Mehr buildings haveturned into coffins for its inhabitants," the reformist Fararunews website wrote Monday.
Seismologist Abdul-Karim Abdullah Taqi, who runs theearthquake monitoring group at Iraq's MeteorologicalDepartment, said the main reason for the lower casualty figurein Iraq was the angle and direction of the fault line in thisparticular quake, as well as the nature of the Iraqigeological formations that could better absorb the shocks.
University of Colorado geological scientist Roger Bilhamsaid earthquakes in the Zagros range, where there are morethan 20 different faults, have killed more than 100,000 peoplein the last 1,000 years. (AP)UZM.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.