Fatalities Reported After Strong Quake Hits Southern Iran

UPDATE at 10:45 ET: More Reports Of Damage

The BBC reports:

“… phone lines had been brought down by the quake and its aftershocks.

Iran’s Red Crescent organisation said there were around 10,000 people living in villages in the affected area, and rescue teams had been deployed to help them.

Mahmoud Mozaffar, the head of Iran’s Red Crescent, told state television that two villages had been “80% damaged” by the quake.”

UPDATE at 9:50 ET: Reports Of Damage

The Associated Press, citing state TV, quotes the deputy governor of Iran’s Bushehr province as saying rescue teams have been dispatched to Shomneh, “the most damaged district in the region” from today’s magnitude-6.3 quake.

A resident in Kaki, the town closest to the epicenter told the AP that people had run out into the streets in fear.

UPDATE at 9:25 ET: Power Plant Reportedly Safe

Reuters, citing the Russian news agency RIA, quotes a statement by the Russian company that built Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant as saying it is operating normally.

“The earthquake in no way affected the normal situation at the reactor. Personnel continue to work in the normal regime and radiation levels are fully within the norm,” an official at Atomstroyexport was quoted as saying.

The Associated Press, quoting Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reports that fearful residents poured into the streets when the temblor occurred. It adds that workers in Qatar were evacuated from high-rise buildings as a precaution.

Reuters, quoting state TV, reports three dead in the quake but gave no details.

“We could clearly feel the earthquake,” one Bushehr resident told Reuters by phone. “The windows and chandeliers all shook.”

Back to our original post:

An earthquake measuring magnitude 6.3 struck southwestern Iran near the Persian Gulf, in the vicinity of the country’s only nuclear power plant, on Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Reuters reports that people across the Gulf in the United Arab Emirates said they felt the quake and that Twitter users in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, said offices there were evacuated.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports that the temblor’s epicenter was located 55 miles southeast of Iran’s coastal city of Bushehr and occurred at a depth of about 6 miles. An apparent aftershock occurred minutes later and measured 5.4. Bushehr is the location of a nuclear power plant.

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Fatalities Reported After Strong Quake Hits Southern Iran

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