Iran’s President Offers Condolences to Families of Earthquake Victims


Iran’s President Offers Condolences to Families of Earthquake Victims

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani extended his condolences to the families of the victims who lost their lives in a Thursday earthquake in the country’s southern province of Bushehr.

Rouhani’s message came after an earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale struck the city of Borazjan in the southern province of Bushehr on Thursday evening.

According to local authorities, the quake killed 7 people and injured about 200 others, some of them critically so.

President Rouhani also urged immediate relief aid to the quake-hit areas, and called upon the officials to mobilize disaster response efforts to help the local residents reeling from the Thursday earthquake.

While the US Geological Survey measured the quake at 5.6, the local Seismological Center of Tehran University’s Geophysics Institute has said that the earthquake measured 5.7 on the Richter scale.

A 6.3-magnitude earthquake in May in the same province killed 37 people and injured 850. Iran's location atop several major faults leaves it prone to earthquakes.

Nine quakes that hit Iran in the last decades were more than magnitude 6, including a 2003 temblor that killed at least 26,000 people in the city of Bam. 

Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) says the Bushehr nuclear power plant in the south of the country is operating as before despite a quake that hit the southern city of Borazjan,around 60 kilometers from on Thursday. 

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for the AEOI, told ISNA on Friday that the plant is running at full capacity.

The power station can withstand strong quakes as it is among the world’s best nuclear plants in terms of meeting safety standards, Kamalvandi said, and dismissed any safety concerns in that regard.

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