Three Iranian Quakes Kill At Least 70

About 1,200 Hurt; Centered In Western Part Of Country

(CBS/AP)  They struck one after the other: three earthquakes and nine aftershocks.

By Friday morning, 70 people were dead, 1,200 wounded, and thousands were homeless in western Iran.

The death toll would have been much higher if the police had not driven around telling people to sleep outside after the first quake, residents said.

The initial quake of magnitude 4.7 struck a mountainous region in western Iran late Thursday. It was followed by a quake of magnitude 5.1 that struck Boroujerd and Doroud, two industrial cities in western Iran, at 11:06 p.m. local time Thursday, state television said.

A third temblor of magnitude 6.0 hit Doroud and surrounding villages at 4:47 a.m. local time on Friday, the television reported.

A total of 70 bodies had been recovered from houses in destroyed in Silakhor, a region north of Doroud, state-owned television reported.

The provincial head of the Unexpected Disaster Committee, Ali Barani, said no fewer than 200 villages were damaged, and some were flattened.

"I woke up at dawn for the prayers, but as I finished and was going back to bed, I felt the ground moving and I immediately ran out of my house," a resident of Khaled Ali, one of the decimated villages, told The Associated Press.

As darkness fell Friday, people whose homes were still standing joined those who had lost theirs in preparing to sleep outside, fearful that aftershocks or additional earthquakes might bring down the remaining buildings, many of which had large cracks in the walls.

Some planned to sleep in cars, others gathered blankets and were lighting fires to warm them during the cold spring night, while others had tents from the Iranian Red Crescent.

Women who had lost loved ones slapped their faces and beat their chests in grief, while those whose homes were destroyed searched for personal belongings amid the rubble.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, visiting north England, expressed her "deep sympathy" to the Iranians hit by the earthquake and offered U.S. assistance.

But Washington had not received an Iranian request for U.S. military aid, and none was being provided, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Friday.

The U.S. military provided aid to the residents of Bam after the south Iranian city was devastated by an earthquake in 2003. Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic relations are currently at loggerheads over U.S. claims that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies.

Most of the 1,200 people injured had been in bed when the quake struck, the television said.