TEHRAN, May 10: A powerful earthquake devastated eastern Iran today, killing close to 1,000 people and injuring 40,000 in a shock wave that flattened 80 villages and damaged scores of others, officials said.

The toll is expected to further go up as more details trickle in. Relief work has been launched on a war footing and the injured are being shifted to hospitals in nearby cities.

The quake, measuring 7.1 degrees on the Richter scale, hit the towns of Birjand and Ghaen and surrounding villages in Khorasan province along the Afghan border at around 1429 IST, official IRNA news agency said.

The head of Iran's Natural Disaster Organisation in Khorasan province, Mehdi Siadati, told IRNA that the towns of Birjand and Ghaen had both suffered ``heavy damage''.

Ghaen's governor, Mojtaba Sadeghian, appealed for ambulances and medical aid to be sent to the quake-stricken areas around his town, which is round 100 kilometres north of Birjand in southern Khorasan.

A Ghaen official told IRNA that 80 villages in the area were completely flattened and 70 others suffered at least 60 per cent damage.

Solat Mortazavi, governor of Birjand, told IRNA that 170 villages had been evacuated.

Iranian state radio said almost 1,000 people were killed and 40,000 injured in the massive temblor, Iran's third major earthquake this year. More than 400 teams of rescuers from Iran's Red Crescent Society as well as police and the military have been dispatched to the area equipped with helicopters and light and heavy machinery, said deputy interior minister Rassul Zargur.

Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the country's most powerful religious organisation, Imam Reza, to come to the aid of the quake victims, state television reported.

The epicentre of the quake was in a sparsely populated area halfway between Ghaen and Birjand and 370 kilometres southeast of Mashhad, the main town in Khorasan province, IRNA said.

The quake shook the southern provinces of Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan, the central region of Semnan and in Kashan province. The quake was also reportedly felt in the western Afghan city of Herat, Birjand residents said. An earthquake in excess of 7.0 degrees on the Richter scale is capable of causing widespread, heavy damage in a populated area.

Bojnurd, north of Khorasan province near the border with Turkmenistan, was hit by earthquakes with an intensity of 6.1 and 5.4 degrees on February 4. Around 80 people were killed in the temblor.

Later the same month, on February 28, a 5.5-degree quake killed around 1,100 people in the northwestern region of Ardabil.

The temperate weather this time of year should make rescue operations easier, contrary to the freezing cold that hampered relief efforts during the last temblors in February. However, rescue workers fear the consequences of after-shocks that normally follow the main tremor.

Almost all of Iran is regarded as a high-risk earthquake zone. The Iranian plateau is situated on a seismic belt and several hundred tremors, including a dozen strong quakes, are registered each year.

A 7.3-degree temblor rocked Iran's northern Gilan and Zanjan provinces on June 21, 1990, leaving nearly 40,000 people dead. Hundreds of villages have been evacuated recently in the aftermath of the quakes to hit Iran in the last three months.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.