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