A moderate earthquake with a magnitude 5.1 on richter scale and its aftershocks rattled a sparsely populated remote area in eastern Iran on Sunday morning, the official IRNA news agency reported. According to AP, the earthquake hit the town of Arianshahr near Birjand some 1,300 kilometers southeast of the capital, Tehran at 7:21 a.m. local time. (0351 GMT) «Some people took refuge in tents after the quake caused cracks on the old walls in the epicenter,» the report said. Families kept their children from school out of fear and over the next two hours there were 11 aftershocks. The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake had a magnitude of 4.9.
