No fewer than five people were killed and 19 injured when a strong earthquake shook southern Iran early Saturday morning, Africa Today News, News York has learnt.
The 6.0 magnitude quake hit 100 kilometres (60 miles) South-West of the port city of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan province, the United States Geological Survey revealed.
The quake struck just a minute after a 5.7 tremor.
Hormozgan governor Mahdi Dosti said the quakes killed five people and injured 19 others, IRNA, a state news agency reported.
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Dosti said most of the damage occurred in the village of Sayeh Khost, close to the epicentre.
One person was killed in November last year when Hormozgan province was hit by twin 6.4 and 6.3 magnitude quakes.
Situated on the edge of several tectonic plates and crossing various fault lines, Iran is an area of strong seismic activity.
Iran’s deadliest quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor that struck in 1990, killing 40,000 people in the north of the country.
A few days ago, Africa Today News, New York gathered that officials said that a strong earthquake slammed a remote border region of Afghanistan overnight, killing at least 920 people and injuring hundreds more.
As rescuers search amid collapsed homes, the death toll is anticipated to grow.
It was gathered that the 5.9 magnitude earthquake was most severe in the arid east, where residents already lead precarious lives in a nation gripped by a humanitarian catastrophe made worse by the Taliban takeover in August.
The country’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, predicted that the death toll would probably continue to grow as reports of victims came in from remote mountain areas throughout the day.
‘So far the information we have is that at least 920 people have been martyred and 600 injured,’ Sharafuddin Muslim, the deputy minister for disaster management, told a press conference in the capital, Kabul.
Earlier, a tribal leader from Paktika province – one of the hardest hit areas – said survivors and rescuers were scrambling to help those affected.