Earthquake death toll exceeds 200 in Iran

Tehran : The death toll from a powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake the previous night along the Iran-Iraq border was 214 people and 2,504 injured, Iran's state TV reported on Monday.

The quake was centered at 32 km south of the city of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, just across the border from Iran, the report said.

The tremor was felt in several Iranian provinces bordering Iraq, including the capital city of Tehran, as well as in other countries such as Turkey, Armenia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Over 20 villages in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah have been damaged, and power and water flows disrupted.

More than 30 Iranian emergency teams have been dispatched to the quake-hit region and helicopters are delivering basic needs. There are also strong aftershocks in the area, according to the Iranian state television.

Local media reports on the earthquake's magnitude varied from 4.5 to 7.3 on the Richter scale.

Esmail Najar, head of Iran's National Disaster Management Organization, said more injured people might have been trapped under the rubble in Qasr-e Shirin county in Kermanshah Province.

Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, being crossed by several major fault lines that cover at least 90 percent of the country. As a result, destructive earthquakes occur constantly.

The deadliest quake in Iran's modern history happened in June of 1990 in the north. It killed an estimated 37,000 people, and destroyed the cities of Rudbar, Manjil and Lushan, along with hundreds of villages.