Hundreds Killed In Iran Quake

A powerful earthquake toppled mud-built homes and flattened villages in central Iran on Tuesday, killing at least 270 people and injuring more than 1,000, officials and state-run television said. A senior official said the death toll could top 350.

Residents were digging frantically through piles of debris looking for loved ones following the 6.4-magnitude earthquake, which struck at 5:55 a.m. While homes made of mud collapsed, buildings of cement appeared not to sustain heavy damage.

"I've seen images of very seriously injured people showing bandages over heads and torsos and being brought in as medical workers try to respond to this unfolding disaster," reporter Angus McDowall in Tehran told CBS Radio News. "The damage seems mainly to have hit villages and of course that makes it quite difficult to assess the extent of the damage and to provide an adequate level of assistance."

Survivors pleaded for help finding the buried: "What a catastrophe. Please help us," one said. Rain was hampering rescue efforts.

The quake's epicenter was on the outskirts of Zarand, a town of about 15,000 people located 35 miles northwest of Kerman, the capital of Kerman province, and about 600 miles southeast of Tehran, said the seismological unit of Tehran University's Geophysics Institute. The mountainous area is in the same province but northwest of Bam, where a quake killed 26,000 people in 2003.

"All hospitals in Zarand are filled to capacity with the injured. Hospitals in the town cannot receive any more of the injured," the broadcast said.

Kerman provincial governor Mohammad Ali Karimi was quoted as saying that "several villages have been destroyed" by the earthquake. Rain was reportedly hampering rescue efforts.

The villages of Hotkan, Khanook, Motaharabad and Islamabad were the worst hit villages, it said.

Mohammad Javad Fadaei, deputy provincial governor of Kerman, said the death toll stood at 231 with more than 1,000 injured, according to state-run television.

Mostafa Soltani, a spokesman at Kerman Governor General Office, said officials expect the final death toll to surpass 350.

"It's difficult to make a prediction but it's possible that the final death toll may reach 350 at the end," Soltani told The Associated Press on the phone from Kerman.

Soltani said the experience of the more powerful earthquake in 2003 in the nearby region helped local authorities cope with the latest quake.

"The earthquake in 2003 gave us a very good experience of how to deal with such a natural disaster. Despite the rain, relief operations are going smoothly. Relief teams have reached the villages and are helping the survivors," he said.

The television quoted the governor of Zarand, identified only as Rashidi, as saying that power in the region has been disrupted. He said medical and other supplies were needed, especially medicine, syringes and tents.

Live pictures on Iranian television showed ambulances carrying the dead and injured and survivors sitting next to the dead slapping their faces and striking their head in grief.

Soltani said Tuesday's quake definitely is not a replay of the devastating 2003 earthquake because the epicenter of the quake is remote villages with few population. Pictures also included many mud-built houses not damaged in some of the villages near the quake epicenter.

That magnitude-6.6 quake flattened the historic southeastern city of Bam in the same region, killing 26,000 people. Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. It experiences at least one slight earthquake everyday on average.