Iran quake rattles India, no casualties

New Delhi (IANS): Strong tremors rocked large parts of north India, including the national capital and its adjoining areas, on Tuesday evening following a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the Pakistan-Iran border. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The quake, which was felt in Pakistan too, killed many people in Iran. "The epicentre of the quake was the Pakistan-Iran border and it measured 7.8 on the Richter scale," said an official of the India Meteorological Department. The quake took place at 4.14 p.m. (IST) at a depth of 33 km, he added. The strong tremors lasted several seconds, leading to panic in many places. People rushed out of their offices and homes in the National Capital Region. In some areas, people could be seen standing outside their high-rise buildings. "I was sleeping when I felt the tremors. I got up. A puppet hanging in the corridor of my home was shaking and the spoons were rattling," said Anushka, who lives in a high-rise building in the suburb of Gurgaon adjoining New Delhi. Some saw ceiling fans in the houses shaking. Similar reports came in from Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. In eastern India, tremors were felt in the morning itself. In Odisha, a low intensity earthquake occurred at 8.36 a.m. and was felt for a few seconds in Astaranga area of Puri district, 70 km from the state capital Bhubaneswar, an official of the Bhubaneswar Meteorological Centre said. Two moderate quakes had hit the northeast earlier in the morning. The first tremor was felt at 6.53 a.m. in Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. The second mild earthquake occurred around 2.04 p.m. in Dibrugarh and Tinsukia in Assam and some areas in Arunachal Pradesh, officials at the Regional Seismological Centre at Shillong said.

8-yr-old child killed An eight-year-old child was killed in a mudslide in Assam on Tuesday as two earthquakes jolted the state along with other northeastern states and Odisha, says a Guwahati report. Three children, who had gone for fishing in river Beki at Kalgasia village in Assam's Barpeta district, were swept into the waters by the mudslide during the first tremor, official sources said. N-plants unaffected Nuclear plants in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan remained unaffected by the earthquake that hit the Pakistan-Iran border region this evening, impact of which was widely felt in northwest India.