A powerful earthquake in Iran has hit dozens of villages, killing at least 500 people and injuring many more.
The magnitude 6.4 quake struck the region shortly before dawn, damaging at least 40 villages with a population of 30,000 people, officials said.
Sub zero temperatures are hindering the search for survivors. Iranian television showed survivors in grief as they sat next to bodies of loved ones, wrapped in blankets.
Emergency officials tried to evacuate survivors to nearby towns and cities, and some 1,500 workers from the Iranian Red Crescent, along with sniffer dogs and mountain rescue teams, fanned out with tents to the effected villages.
But the agency told international relief officials it did not need outside aid, said Roy Probert, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Iranian relief officials said they were benefiting from their experience in the far more devastating earthquake that hit about 150 miles away in Bam in December 2003, killing 26,000 people and flattening the historic city.
While homes made of mud collapsed in today's quake, cement buildings appeared not to have sustained heavy damage. The destruction was limited by the region's sparse population. Still, the tiny villages that dot the mountain ranges were heavily hit.
Agencies