Tremors from Iran quake kill 13 in Pakistan

At least 13 people were killed and hundreds of houses destroyed in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday when the region was struck by tremors from an earthquake that was centred in neighbouring Iran, Pakistani officials said.

Tremors from the 7.8 magnitude quake were also felt in India and Gulf states.

The epicenter was in southeast Iran in an area of mountains and desert, about 200 km (125 miles) southeast of Zahedan and 250 km northwest of Turbat in Pakistan, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Pakistani officials said at least eight people were killed and 20 wounded in the town of Mashkeel in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran.

Mohammed Ashraf, the head of a local health centre in Mashkeel, said several hundred houses in the town had collapsed.

Three women and two children were also killed when their mud house collapsed in the Baluchistan district of Panjgur.

"The earthquake has killed at least five people in Panjgur," said Ali Imran, an official at the Provincial Control Room, a government disaster-response unit in Quetta, the main city in Baluchistan.

In the towns of Mand and Turbat in western Baluchistan, residents reported feeling strong tremors that left cracks in the walls of houses, but there were no initial reports of deaths or injuries.

An Iranian crisis centre official told the ISNA news agency there had been no deaths reported in Iran.

Iran sits on major geological faultlines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 that flattened the city of Bam, in Iran's far southeast, killing more than 25,000 people.