TEHRAN
— Iranians dug through rubble in a frantic search for survivors on
Monday, after a powerful earthquake struck near the Iraqi border,
killing more than 450 people and injuring thousands of others in the
world’s deadliest earthquake so far this year.
The
quake, recorded at 9:18 p.m. on Sunday, was felt as far away as Turkey
and Pakistan. The epicenter was near Ezgeleh, Iran, about 135 miles
northeast of Baghdad, and had a preliminary magnitude of 7.3,
according to the United States Geological Survey. Seismologists in the
country said it was the biggest quake to hit the western part of Iran.
Photographs
from the region — a patchwork of farms and home to many Kurds, a large
ethnic minority in Iran — posted on the internet showed collapsed
buildings, cars destroyed by rubble and people sleeping in the streets
in fear of aftershocks.
At
least 445 people were killed and 7,370 people were injured in Iran,
according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency, which gave an
estimate significantly higher than the death toll of 407 that officials
had announced earlier.
At
least eight people were killed on the Iraqi side of the border,
according to Dr. Saif al-Badir, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, and
at least 535 were hurt.
In
Tehran, hundreds of people waited in line to donate blood in response
to a call from the government. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme
leader, delivered a message of condolence on Monday, urging rescue workers to keep searching for survivors.
“The
officials should hasten in these first hours with all their might and
determination to help the injured, especially those trapped under the
rubble,” his office reported.
By the evening, however, Iranian officials said that the rescue mission was nearly over, according to the state news media.
Particularly hard hit was Pol-e Zahab,
a city in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah, according to the
semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency. The authorities said that at
least 236 people had died in the city, which has a population of 30,000,
and the main hospital was believed to be at least partly running.
One image from Pol-e Zahab
appeared to show the near-destruction of an apartment block recently
built for low-income families. Another, posted on the website Khabar
Online, showed a pickup truck transporting victims under colorful blankets.
Farhad
Tarji, a member of Parliament for Pol-e Zahab, told the semiofficial
news agency ILNA that his family had been devastated by the quake. “I’ve
lost 15 people,” he said.
The Iranian government newspaper posted a video on its website in which a resident of Pol-e Zahab complained that no aid had come.
“There
has been no help yet, neither food nor water, no clothing, no tents,
there is nothing,” said the resident, a man who appeared to be in his
30s, while standing in a street with collapsed buildings. “There are no
facilities yet. We’ve slept outside since last night. This is the
condition of our homes. Our electricity, water, gas, phone lines are
out, everything is completely out, the whole city has been destroyed, it
is wrecked.”
An image posted on social media showed soldiers searching through the rubble at night without flashlights or torches, using their cellphones for light.
Officials
from the Health Ministry traveled to the area, as did the commander in
chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Ali
Jafari, but foreign reporters were not allowed to visit the scene, in a
change from previous disasters.
The Iranian Red Crescent used rescue dogs to search for survivors, as it has since an earthquake in the southern city of Bam
in 2003 that killed more than 20,000 people. The country’s religious
leaders regard dogs as unclean, but the use of guard and rescue dogs is
accepted.
Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who was president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, introduced a
program to build low-income housing, including in Pol-e Zahab. After the
quake on Sunday, his political opponents said that many of the
buildings had been poorly constructed, but his defenders said that the
buildings were on fault lines and that nothing could have been done.
Initial
reports from the Kurdish region of Iraq indicated less damage and fewer
deaths on that side of the border. In Sulaimaniya, the second-largest
city in Iraq’s Kurdish region, residents described feeling heavy tremors
but said there was no notable building damage. Residents in the
oil-rich town of Kirkuk, roughly 50 miles to the west, reported similar
damage.
Ali
Namiq, a resident of the town Darbandikhan, Iraq, said a building was
flattened by the quake. “The building fell on a seven-member family,” he
told Reuters. “We managed to rescue only five out of them, while the
two others were killed. It was the first time for me to see an
earthquake. It is a divine act that no one can prevent.”
In the town of Kalar, Iraq, the quake sent items tumbling from shelves in a supermarket, causing shoppers to flee.
The quake occurred about 20 miles south of the Iraqi city of Halabja,
where Saddam Hussein’s government launched a poison gas attack that
killed more than 5,000 people, mostly Kurds, on March 16, 1988, in the
closing days of the Iran-Iraq war.
The
earthquake was felt as far as the Mediterranean coast of Israel. Shiite
pilgrims in the Iraqi city of Karbala, for the annual religious
commemoration of Arba’een, posted videos of people gathering on the
streets after the earthquake.
Iran
lies on dozens of fault lines and is prone to quakes. In 2012, a double
earthquake in the north of the country killed 300 people. When
residents learned of the government’s lackluster relief efforts, some started organizing aid groups themselves. After that quake, the United States, which does not maintain normal diplomatic relations with Iran, sent several planeloads of aid.
