While British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is finally apologising for the ‘distress and anguish’ caused by his comments about a Briton who has been jailed in Iran, an earthquake is tearing through the country and its neighbouring Iraq, killing over 400 people (with the death count reported to have reached 445) and having a massive magnitude of 7.3.
Rescue teams are struggling to save survivors who have become trapped by the rubble resulting from the earthquake, which hit the northern border region between Iraq and iran. On top of the more than 400 people dead, there are thousands of people who were injured in the damage (estimated by Iran’s state-controlled media agency Irna to be a whopping 6,700).
The quake hit at 9:20pm local time and struck the worst in the province of Kermanshah.
Tremors felt for hundreds of miles
The tremors from the Iran-Iraq earthquake were felt for hundreds of miles around the epicentre, and were felt in both countries’ capital cities: Tehran and Baghdad. Over 236 people were killed by the quake in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab alone, which is located about ten miles from the border of Iraq, which was the epicentre of the quake. Emergency rescue workers have been left scrambling as over 70,000 people have been left in need of shelter.
