Earthquake strikes near Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant

DUBAI: An earthquake of magnitude of 4.9 struck near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant on Friday but an Iranian emergency services official said there were no immediate reports of damage.

The US Geological Survey earlier said the quake had a magnitude of 5.1.

“Survey teams have been dispatched to the area and fortunately … there are no reports on damage, except some landslides in a mountainous area,” Jahangir Dehqani, the head of the provincial emergency department, told state television.

A quake of 4.9 magnitude can cause moderate damage.

It was centered 53 km (33 miles) east of Bushehr, a nuclear plant on Iran’s southern coast on the Gulf and was relatively shallow – only 10 km deep according to Iranian media – which would have amplified the shaking.

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

The country has suffered a number of major disasters in recent decades, including at the ancient city of Bam, which was decimated by a catastrophic earthquake in 2003 that killed at least 31,000 people.

In 1990, a 7.4-magnitude quake in northern Iran killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless, reducing dozens of towns and nearly 2,000 villages to rubble.

Iran has experienced at least two other significant quakes in recent years — one in 2005 that killed more than 600 people and another in 2012 that left some 300 dead.