#breaking #erbil the earth quake felt across #iraq pic.twitter.com/NxqwMu67zT
— Steven nabil (@thestevennabil) 12 November 2017
A powerful earthquake hit the northern border region between Iran and Iraq on November 12, killing more than 348 people in Iran and seven in Iraq, and injuring thousands more. According to Iran’s state-run Irna news agency 5,953 people were injured.
The hardest hit province was Kermanshah. More than 236 people died in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 10 miles from the Iraq border.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, offered his condolences and urged government agencies to do all they could to help those affected. Iranian police and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were dispatched to affected areas overnight.
On the Iraqi side, the most extensive damage was in the town of Darbandikhan, 47 miles east of the city of Sulaimaniya in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. More than 30 people were injured in the town, according to the Kurdish health minister, Rekawt Hama Rasheed.
The quake killed at least seven people in Iraq and injured 535, all in the country’s northern, semi-autonomous Kurdish region, the interior ministry said.
The magnitude-7.3 quake was centred 19 miles outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja. It struck at a depth of 14.4 miles (23.2km), a shallow depth that can have broader damage. Magnitude-7 earthquakes on their own are capable of widespread, heavy damage.
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