An earthquake measuring 5 on the Richter scale shook Kiar city in the southwestern Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari Province before midday on Thursday. The tremor which occurred at a depth of 6 km had no casualties but caused damages to residential units in the area, according to Sattar Farhadi Farhadi, head of the province’s Crisis Management and Mitigation Office, IRNA reported. Aid teams have been dispatched to the quake-stricken area to assess extent of the damage. Iran straddles several major seismic faults, and is prone to frequent earthquakes, many of which have been devastating. One of the worst devastated the historic city of Bam in Kerman Province in December 2003, killing 31,000 people (about a quarter of the population) and destroying the city’s ancient mud-built citadel. In August 2012, two quakes in northwestern Iran also claimed the lives of 306 people and injured more than 4,500 others.
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