Middle East, Weather | featured news

Iran has been struck by its most powerful earthquake for more than 50 years, with tremors felt across Pakistan, India and the Middle East. The epicentre of the 7.8-magnitude quake was near the south-eastern city of Khash, close to Pakistan.

Iran's government faced criticism on Monday over its response to two earthquakes that killed 306 people, with complaints of a lack of tents and about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's decision to go ahead with an overseas trip.

The death toll from twin earthquakes rose to 300, officials said Sunday, as rescue efforts in northwest Irancontinued and more bodies were expected to be found.

Two strong earthquakes leveled villages and damaged homes in northwestern Iran on Saturday, killing at least 180 people and injuring more than 1,350 others, state TV reported. Thousands of people spent the night outdoors as aftershocks rattled the area.

As many as 50 people are feared entombed under tons of rock and stone that buried a village in a landslide after two earthquakes in northern Afghanistan, authorities said Tuesday....

A Pakistani airliner with 131 people on board crashed in bad weather near Islamabad's international airport on Friday, a civil aviation official said.

An avalanche smashed into a Pakistani army base on a Himalayan glacier along the Indian border on Saturday, burying around 100 soldiers, the military said....

Turkey struggled to provide shelter on Wednesday to tens of thousands left homeless by an earthquake that killed nearly 500, and rescue teams began taking painful decisions to call off searches for those buried alive.

As night fell over eastern Turkey on Sunday following the most powerful earthquake in at least a decade, citizens were using flashlights and shovels as they clambered over the rubble of collapsed buildings looking for survivors. At least seven aftershocks rattled the region, one of the nation's poorest. The extent of casualties was not immediately known.

Widespread fire that has wreaked havoc in Israel could be contained soon, an Israeli public security official said Sunday .