Earthquake Injures 21 in Western Town

An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale hit a western Iranian town, injuring 21 people. The quake occurred in Sarpol-e Zahab, Kermanshah Province, at around 06:52 p.m. local time on Saturday, Tasnim News Agency reported. According to the Seismological Center of the Institute of Geophysics of Tehran University, the epicenter of the quake was about eight km deep. The quake left 21 people injured in rural and urban area. Officials have dispatched search and rescue teams to the quake-hit areas. Earlier in November, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck western Iran, killing more than 600 and injuring more than 9,000. Sarpol-e Zahab suffered half of the temblor's casualties. Iran, which sits on several seismological fault lines, is prone to earthquakes and suffers a quake per day on average. A magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam in southern Iran and killed thousands of people in 2003.