TEHRAN: An elderly woman and a young girl died and nearly 100 people were injured as a 5.2 magnitude earthquake sparked panic in the Iranian capital and neighbouring areas, officials said on Thursday.

The epicentre of the quake, which struck shortly before 11:30 pm (2000 GMT) on Wednesday, was just 40 kilometres west of the capital, according to the seismological centre of the University of Tehran.

“A 70-year-old woman died after suffering a heart attack and a 10--year-old died of elevated stress,” the head of Iran’s hospital emergency services, Mojtaba Khaledi, told the ISNA news agency.

The head of the Iranian Red Crescent’s Relief and Rescue Organisation, Morteza Salimi, said 97 people were injured.

Khaledi said around 50 of those were admitted to hospital.

The quake caused no major damage but tens of thousands of people spent the night outside for fear of aftershocks.

Many of them did so in their vehicles with the engines switched on for warmth in the wintry conditions, exacerbating the thick smog that has enveloped the capital all week. Petrol purchases in the six hours after the quake reached 10 million litres, more than double the average full day sales even though it was in the middle of the night, the national fuel distribution company said.

Average airborne concentration of the finest and most hazardous particles (PM2.5) rose to 170 microgrammes per cubic metre, with peaks of 194 microgrammes in some neighbourhoods, Tehran municipality said.

That is some seven times higher than the World Health Organization recommended maximum of 25 microgrammes per m3 over a 24-hour period.

UK-Iranian prisoner

Meanwhile, in an unrelated development husband of British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving a five-year jail sentence in Tehran for alleged sedition, said that she could be due for early release and possibly home for Christmas.

Richard Ratcliffe told reporters that his wife had received notification from her Iranian lawyer that she was now “marked for early release” following an update on Iran’s judicial database.

“I’m reasonably positive. It’s not clear how good the news is, but it’s definitely good news,” he said. “It’s like it’s moved another stage. He (lawyer) said there’s still paperwork to finalise, but it should be over soon − days to weeks, not months or years.” On being home by Christmas, he said there was “an outside shot”.

Agencies