Just days after a deadly temblor struck near Iran’s border with Pakistan, a 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit northwestern Iran on Thursday, media reports said, citing the seismological centre at Tehran University.
No immediate reports of casualties or damage have been reported in the latest quake which struck at a depth of 8km in the town of Tassouj.
“So far there are no reports of damage. We are in touch with the prefect of Tassouj and local authorities stand ready,” to deal with any crisis, ISNA news agency reported quoting Khalil Saiie, a local official from East Azerbaijan province.
A Red Crescent official, also quoted by ISNA, said there was no immediate information about any casualties in Tassouj, or in the towns of Maragheh and Shabestar which also felt the quake. It was followed by two low-intensity aftershocks.
Tassouj is located less than 100km from the provincial capital Tabriz, where the quake was also felt.
A huge earthquake measuring 7.8 had on Tuesday struck southeastern Iran killing a woman and injuring more than a dozen other people. At least 40 people were killed across the border in Pakistan where hundreds of mud homes were levelled.
Tuesday’s earthquake was the strongest to hit Iran since 1957.
A double earthquake, one measuring 6.2 and the other 6.0, struck northwestern Iran last August, killing more than 300 people and injuring 3,000.
In December 2003, a massive quake struck the southern city of Bam. It killed 26,271 people – about a quarter of the population – and destroyed the city’s ancient mud-built citadel.
Iran is located on seismic fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. It experiences at least one earthquake every day on average, although the vast majority are so small they go unnoticed.
A victim of earthquake sits on the ruins of buildings at the village of Bajebaj near the city of Varzaqan in northwestern Iran, Sunday, Aug. 12, 2012
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