At least three people were killed and hundreds were injured as a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck Iran on Saturday night.

 

The earthquake hit the city of Khoy, West Azerbaijan province, in northwest Iran, around 9:44 p.m. local time, citing the Iranian Seismological Center in Tehran.

 

 

"This incident has left 816 injured and three dead," West Azerbaijan governor Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian was quoted as saying by IRNA news agency, revising up an earlier toll of two dead and 580 injured.

 

 

Following the quake, Iran's minister of interior and chief of the Red Crescent Society traveled to Khoy.

 

 

Iran sits astride the boundaries of several major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity.

 

 

On January 18, a 5.8 quake near Khoy left hundreds injured.

 

 

In February 2020, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake that rattled the western village of Habash-e Olya killed at least nine people over the border in neighboring Türkiye.

 

 

Iran’s deadliest recorded quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people in the country’s north, injured 300,000, and left half a million homeless.