DUBAI: An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 struck northwest Iran near the border with Turkiye on Saturday, killing at least two people and injuring dozens, Iranian media reported.
“There are 122 injured so far in the city of Khoy… and unfortunately two dead,” emergency services spokesperson Mojtaba Khaledi told state television.
Iranian emergency officials said rescue teams were despatched to the area in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province and hospitals were put on alert, according to state media.

BEIRUT: The World Food Programme has warned that hunger rates in Syria have soared to record highs after more than a decade of devastating conflict.

TEHRAN: A loud blast was heard at a military plant in Iran’s central city of Isfahan, but a security official said there were no casualties, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said on its website early on Sunday.

“The explosion took place in one of the munitions manufacturing centers of the Defense Ministry and, according to an announcement by the …deputy Isfahan governor for security, there were no casualties,” IRIB reported.

PARIS: Iranian authorities have executed 55 people in 2023, Norway-based Iran Human Rights said on Friday, adding that the surging use of the death penalty aims to create fear as protests shake the country.
Meanwhile, rights group Amnesty International said three young people sentenced to death over protests — the youngest aged just 18 — had been subjected to “gruesome torture” in detention.
IHR said it has confirmed at least 55 executions in the first 26 days of this year.

TEHRAN: One of Iran’s top clerics, Nasser Makarem, has spoken out against the use of violence to force women into wearing the veil.
Iran has witnessed a wave of nationwide protests since the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old ethnic Kurd, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the regime’s dress code for women.
Hundreds of people have been killed, including dozens of security personnel, and thousands have been arrested in the protests, which authorities generally refer to a “riots.”