Reuters - An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 shook northeastern Iran on Thursday, but there was little damage and no casualties, state television reported.

The quake was centered on an area near Sangan, a town of about 10,000 people near the border with Afghanistan, at a shallow depth of 8 km (5 miles).

�Our near-final report is that about 14 villages have had very limited damage,� Morteza Salimi, head of rescue at Iran�s Red Crescent, told the television.

�There are no casualties and most of the damage is walls collapsing in places where livestock is kept,� he added.

Crisscrossed by major fault lines, Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 quake in southeastern Kerman province killed 31,000 people and flattened the ancient city of Bam.


Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Edmund Blair