Iran Reports One Killed, Pakistan at Least 40 in 7.7 Quake

A huge earthquake that struck Iran's rural southeast region killed one woman and injured more than two dozen other people, media reports Wednesday cited officials as saying.

"A woman was killed by a mountain landslide following the quake," Alireza Shahraki, governor of Khash city, was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying.

According to other Iranian officials cited by the media, Tuesday's 7.7 magnitude quake in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan also left 27 people injured while more than 20 villages were damaged.

At least eight aftershocks have been recorded, the strongest measuring 5.6 magnitude.

In neighboring Pakistan, the quake killed at least 40 and brought down hundreds of mud-built homes.

The powerful tremor also shook the ground and caused panic as far afield as Kuwait and the Indian capital New Delhi. Thousands of people evacuated towering residential and office buildings in Dubai.

U.S. seismologists said the quake struck at 3:14 pm Iranian time (10:44 GMT) with its epicenter around 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Khash.

It came a week after an earthquake struck near Iran's Gulf port city of Bushehr, killing at least 30 people and injuring 800.

Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating.

A double earthquake, one measuring 6.2 and the other 6.0, struck northwest 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.

In Pakistan survivors dug through the rubble of their ruined homes Wednesday as the military rushed to send aid to the remote region.

The United States also offered aid after the quake damaged an estimated three-quarters of the mud-built homes of Mashkail, a town in the dirt-poor Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

Efforts to help the survivors have been hampered by Mashkail's remote location -- communities are scattered, there are no paved roads, no electricity and limited mobile phone coverage, and no proper medical facilities.

Only three tents were visible in the town and frightened families were sheltering under trees, an Agence France Presse reporter said, too scared to return to their homes for fear of aftershocks.

A 5.7-magnitude tremor early Wednesday frayed nerves even further.

Some 15-20 people made the boneshaking, 45-minute journey across bare ground to the Iranian border to reach a hospital and see a doctor, according to officials with Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary.

While some survivors offered prayers for the dead, others dug through rubble with spades and even knives to try to recover their belongings.

"We often feel tremors here, but this was the worst I've ever seen in my life. I thought a bulldozer was passing by close to my house," Abdul Ghaffour, who is about 50, told AFP.

"All the homes are mud homes. A lot of walls fell. There was a lot of dust so I couldn't see what was happening. Thank God my family and I are safe."

Major General Obaidullah Khattak of the Frontier Corps, another Pakistani paramilitary force, said 16 badly injured people had been taken by helicopter to Baluchistan's capital Quetta for treatment and nine doctors were on the scene.

"We have sent one tonne of medicine. Two trucks of edible items and 350 tents will arrive tonight; 500 troops have reached Mashkail from the surrounding areas, traveling through the night to provide help," he told AFP.

The area's scattered population made determining the death toll difficult, but Frontier Corps Major Attiq Minhas told AFP at Dalbandin airport, around 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Mashkail, that at least 40 people had died.

On the Iranian side of the border, one woman was reported killed by falling rocks and the Red Crescent rushed 400 tents to shelter some 1,700 people who lost their homes in the quake.

Minhas said 650 Pakistani personnel were involved in the rescue operation in Mashkail town and that so far medical staff had received 23 wounded people.

Abdul Bari, a 32-year-old tailor who broke his leg, said that his wife and children were fine, but feared that dozens of people had been killed or wounded.

"When I felt the tremors, I saw within seconds houses razed to the ground. It was like doomsday," he told AFP in Dalbandin, after traveling for five and a half hours by taxi for help.

Baluchistan, an inaccessible province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is plagued by Islamist militancy, attacks on the Shiite Muslim minority and a separatist Baluch insurgency.

Putting aside America's longstanding enmity with Iran, and its more recent strains in relations with Pakistan, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry offered condolences and assistance with relief work.

Disaster relief contributed to an earlier thaw in relations between the United States and Iran, which accepted U.S. personnel following the Bam earthquake in 2003, which killed more than 26,000 people.

The United States has also engaged in disaster diplomacy with Pakistan, briefly improving its abysmal image in the country following a 2005 earthquake in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where more than 73,000 died.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon also expressed condolences after Tuesday's disaster and said the UN too stood ready to help if needed.