At least one person was killed and 30 injured when a magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit remote northwestern Iran on Wednesday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. That brought the official death toll to three. The semi-official Tasnim news agency said a primary school in Bam, south of the town of Seysabad, collapsed due to the quake. “Seven young students in the school died because they were sleeping in one of the classrooms.
Twenty-seven girls and one boy were in the school when the earthquake struck, according to the head of the school. Three other students who were injured died in hospitals after the earthquake, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.
The earthquake triggered landslides that cut off access to many areas of the mountainous region of Iran. Several roads and villages were reportedly blocked by the landslides.
As Iranian authorities struggled to determine the extent of the damage, residents of Bam and other nearby towns sought to resume their lives. Seysabad, 25 miles from Bam, was rebuilt after the city was leveled by an earthquake in 2003 that killed about 26,000 people. Officials had declared Wednesday a national day of mourning for the dead and wished to celebrate the national day of victory over the Islamic State.