Iran, magnitude 5.9 earthquake At least 5 dead and 300 wounded

of at least 5 dead and 300 injured the earthquake that struck north-western Iran Thursday night, according to the country's state television. The epicenter of the earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.9, occurred at 8 kilometers deep, in the province of eastern Azerbaijan, about 120 kilometers south-east of the city of Tabriz. This is reported by the seismological center of the Institute of Geophysics of the University of Tehran. Reached by telephone by the television station, the province's governor, Mohammad-Reza Pourmohammadi, said that five people had died and that the earthquake had destroyed 30 houses. According to state television, there would also be 120 injured.

Rescue operations are underway in 41 villages, but the damage material, which seems to be limited, concentrated mainly in two locations. The population in these rural mountain areas emerged from homes after the first shock. At around 05:30 am (02:00 GMT), the Iranian Fars agency reported that people were starting to return home and that the situation seemed to return to normal after the initial panic. Located on the border of numerous tectonic plates and crossed by numerous fractures, Iran is an area of ​​strong seismic activity. The last major earthquake was in November 2017. A 7.3 magnitude earthquake in the province of Kermanshah (West) killed 620 people. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in the province of Kerman, in the south-east of Iran, devastated the ancient city of Bam and killed at least 31,000 people. The most violent earthquake in the last 30 years, with a magnitude 7.4, caused 40,000 deaths and left half a million people homeless in the north of the country in 1990.