Three Iranian Quakes Kill At Least 70

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.

After the first quake struck, police in the city of Boroujerd and the town of Doroud toured the streets with loudspeakers urging people to leave their homes for fear of subsequent temblors.

The measure is thought to have contributed to a lower death toll than is usual in Iran for quakes of this magnitude.

The quake in the middle of the night caused panic, with citizens in Doroud running out of their homes. Many spent the night in open space, residents said.

"We are afraid to get back home. I spent the night with my family and guests in open space last night," Doroud resident Mahmoud Chaharmiri told the AP by telephone.

Twelve aftershocks were registered after the first quake, said Nabi Bidhendi, the head of Tehran University's Geophysics Institute.

Such quakes have killed thousands of people in the past in the countryside where houses are often built of mudbricks.

The epicenter of Thursday night's quake was in the mountains south of Boroujerd and north of Doroud.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 5.7-magnitude quake at 4:47 a.m., followed by a 4.7-magnitude 15 minutes later. Their epicenters were 210 miles southwest of Tehran.

The area had been hit by a 4.7-magnitude quake the day before, the USGS said.

Disaster official Barani told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that rescue teams had been sent to the region to help the survivors.

Television showed survivors standing next to their destroyed homes and showed dozens of sheep and goats killed by the quake.

Barani said hospitals in the cities of Doroud and Boroujerd were full to their capacity and could not receive further injured, the television reported.

Officials recalled doctors and nurses from vacation to help treat the injured. Iranians are celebrating Nowruz, or new year, and most government offices are closed.

Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes, often with devastating results because much of the housing is poorly constructed. Often, the earthquakes trigger landslides, CBS News notes. Iran experiences at least one slight earthquake everyday on average.

In February 2005, a 6.4-magnitude quake rocked the town of Zarand in southern Iran, killing 612 people and injuring more than 1,400. In that quake, CBS News reported some 40 villages with a population of 30,000 people were damaged, leaving many homeless. At least 80 percent of the buildings in Sarbagh were leveled.

A magnitude-6.6 quake flattened the historic city of Bam in the same region in December 2003, killing 26,000 people. In 1990, 40,000 people died in a quake, CBS News reported.