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The Iranian authorities announced on Monday that the number of wounded in the magnitude 6.3 earthquake in western Iran the previous night had reached 716 people. No casualties were reported by the shaker.
According to Iranian television, most of the wounded were immediately released from their hospitals and suffered only minor injuries during the earthquake on Sunday night. The television said that 37 were still hospitalized.
More than 160 aftershocks have been recorded in the region, including two more serious than magnitude 5. Dozens of rescue teams and several rescue dogs have been deployed in the area.
The television showed images of hospitalized people. Dr. Hossein Rahnimi, director of a local hospital, said many wounded had also been victims of panic attacks.
The earthquake hit western Iran near the Iraqi border, damaging buildings and sending frightened residents back to the streets.
He struck near the town of Sarpol-e Zahab in the Iranian province of Kermanshah, the epicenter of an earthquake that killed more than 600 people last year and where some are still homeless.
This earthquake had a magnitude of 7.3 and also injured more than 9,000 people.
Sunday also destroyed power lines and caused brief power outages in the night as temperatures hovered around 8 degrees Celsius.
The earthquake struck just after 8 pm in Iran, meaning that most were still awake at the time and able to flee quickly.
The region, nestled in the Zagros Mountains, largely rebuilt in recent decades after the ruin of Iran and the war in Iraq in the 1980s, has seen many buildings collapse or suffer damage during the earthquake of 2017.
Iran is located on major seismic faults and is experiencing an earthquake per day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake devastated the historic city of Bam in southern Iran, killing 26,000 people.
