Iran’s Red Crescent Society said in the morning that search and rescue operations were nearly over.
“We are concentrating on housing the victims of the earthquake,” Dousti told television.
Iran sits astride the boundaries of several major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity.
The Islamic republic’s deadliest quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people in the north, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless.
In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake in southeastern Iran levelled the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killed at least 31,000 people.
In November 2017, a 7.3-magnitude quake in Iran’s western province of Kermanshah killed 620 people.
In December 2019 and January 2020, two earthquakes struck near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbours have raised concerns about the reliability of the country’s sole nuclear power facility, which produces 1,000 megawatts of power, and the risk of radioactive leaks in case of a major earthquake.
In February 2020, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in northwestern Iran killed nine people, including children, in neighbouring Turkey and injured dozens on both sides of the border.
One person was killed in November last year when Hormozgan province was hit by twin 6.4 and 6.3 magnitude quakes.
