4.6 Aftershock Jolts Iran; 9-Year-Old Found Alive

A magnitude 4.6 earthquake shook northwestern Iran on Thursday, the latest in a series of aftershocks that has made relief work dangerous in the area after last week’s massive temblor.

Soviet rescue workers late Wednesday pulled a 9-year-old boy alive but comatose from the rubble of his home almost a week after the quake and rushed him to hospital, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said Thursday.

The boy, Morteza Amirpour, was the 19th survivor to be found between Monday and Wednesday. IRNA said he suffered only minor injuries but was in a coma when found by Soviet relief workers under the debris of his home in Rahmatabad, near Roudbar, 145 miles northwest of Tehran.

Other members of Amirpour’s family were found dead in the rubble near to where Soviet relief workers discovered him, IRNA said.

The Tehran University Geophysical Center said there were 15 aftershocks in a 24-hour period ending at 6:15 a.m. Thursday when the latest quake struck, one week after the tremor that killed at least 40,000 people.

The continuing aftershocks have caused panic and fear among the survivors and made relief work dangerous. One relief worker was killed Wednesday when a wall fell on him during an aftershock.

A military helicopter crash in the disaster area killed Mohammed Hussein Eftekhari, a deputy in the Majlis, Iran’s Parliament, and injured four relief workers and two crew members.

An official in Geophysical Center said that aftershocks could continue for two months but that they were now “gradually stabilizing,” the news agency said.

Relief supplies for the disaster victims continued to pour in from several countries. Convoys of trucks from the Soviet Union and Turkey crossed the border into Iran carrying relief, but most assistance arrived by plane.

An official who visited the quake-hit area said temporary lodging would be provided for the 500,000 people made homeless. Iran has appealed for help from abroad in the form of prefabricated housing and architects to assist in rebuilding some of the destroyed towns.

The June 21 temblor, with a magnitude of 7.3 to 7.7, devastated the region between the Caspian Sea and Zanjan, 175 miles northwest of Tehran. Damage caused by the disaster was estimated at more than $7 billion.