More than 130 killed by earthquake in Iran-Iraq border region

More than 130 people have been killed in Iran and Iraq after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit the border region between the two countries, state media said.
As rescuers stepped up efforts through the night to find people trapped in collapsed buildings, the deputy governor of Iran’s Kermanshah province on the Iraqi border told state television that at least 129 were dead and that the toll would rise..
“There are still people under the rubble. We hope the number of dead and injured won’t rise too much, but it will rise,” Mojtaba Nikkerdar said.
More than 60 of the victims were in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 15km (10 miles) from the border.
Officials in Iraq reported that at least six people had died and 50 injured.
The US Geological Survey said the quake measured magnitude 7.3, while an Iraqi meteorology official put its magnitude at 6.5 with the epicentre in Penjwin in Sulaimaniyah province in the Kurdistan region close to the main border crossing with Iran.
The quake struck at around 9.20pm local time on Sunday, with tremors felt 350km away in Baghdad and as far as south-eastern Turkey.
The electricity was cut off in several Iranian and Iraqi cities, and fears of aftershocks sent thousands of people in both countries out onto the streets and parks in cold weather.
“The night has made it difficult for helicopters to fly to the affected areas and some roads are also cut off... we are worried about remote villages,” Iranian interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said in an interview on state television.

The building was just dancing in the air.

On the Iraqi side, the most extensive damage was in the town of Darbandikhan, 75km east of the city of Sulaimaniyah in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, where the mayor told AFP that four people had died.
A child and an elderly person were killed in Kalar, according to the director of the hospital in the town about 70km south of Darbandikhan, and 105 people injured, AFP said.

Kurdish health minister Rekawt Hama Rasheed told Reuters the situation in Darbandikhan was “very critical”. The district’s main hospital was severely damaged and had no power, Rasheed said, so the injured were being taken to Sulaimaniyah for treatment. There was extensive structural damage to buildings and homes. In Halabja, local officials said a 12-year-old boy died from an electric shock when an electric cable fell during the earthquake.
Many residents in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, rushed out of houses and tall buildings in panic.
“I was sitting with my kids having dinner and suddenly the building was just dancing in the air,” said Majida Ameer, who ran out of her building in the capital’s Salihiya district with her three children. “I thought at first that it was a huge bomb. But then I heard everyone around me screaming: ‘Earthquake!’”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/12/dozens-killed-by-earthquake-in-iraniraq-border-region