Earthquake devastates Iranian city

An earthquake destroyed 60% of the housing in a city in southeast Iran early today, killing many people as they slept, state television reported.

“Many people have died,” the governor of Kerman province, Mohammad Ali Karimi, told state television.

”Many people are buried under the rubble” in Bam, a city about 1,000 kilometres (630 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran.

Iranian television said the quake had a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale and its epicentre was near Bam.

The television’s reporter in Kerman city said 60% of the houses in Bam had collapsed. Earlier, the television reported that all houses made of bricks had collapsed in the region.

Damage was reported in three towns around Bam.

The city's citadel, a medieval fortress which attracts thousands of tourists a year, was destroyed.

The authorities have sent numerous rescue workers with helicopters to the area, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“We are doing everything we can to rescue the injured and unearth the dead,” the television quoted Karimi as saying.

“Authorities have demanded immediate blood donations to save the lives of those who have been admitted to hospital in the provincial capital of Kerman,” the newscaster said.

She added telephone links with Bam have been severed. Authorities were in contact with the Bam area through radio and satellite phone links.

The television said the quake struck at 5:28am Iranian time (1.58am Irish time).

There were several aftershocks, one of magnitude 5.3, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the geophysics institute of Tehran University as saying.

In Iran, quakes of more than magnitude five usually kill people.

In Washington, the US Geological Survey reported the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.7, which is high enough to cause severe damage.