Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many died in the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran?
The 2003 Bam earthquake struck Bam and the surrounding Kerman province of south-eastern Iran at 01:56 UTC (5:26 AM Iran Standard Time) on 26 December 2003. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is 6.6 on the moment magnitude scale (Mw); estimated by the United States Geological Survey. The earthquake was particularly destructive, with the death toll amounting to 26,271 people and injuring an additional 30,000. The effects of the earthquake and damage was exacerbated by the fact that the city chiefly consisted of mud brick buildings, many of which did not comply with earthquake regulations set in Iran in 1989, and that most of the city's people were indoors and asleep.
2005 Ahvaz unrest or 15 April Ahvaz Protests were violent riots, initiated by Iranian Arabs in the city of Ahvaz in southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan. The unrest erupted on 15 April 2005, and lasted for 4 days. Initially, the Iranian Interior Ministry stated that only one person had been killed, however an official at a hospital in Ahvaz said that between 15 and 20 mortal casualties. Government officials blamed the unrest on Britain, whose troops based just across the border in southern Iraq. Following the unrest, several bombings were carried out in Ahvaz, killing 28 people. In 2006, Iran executed five Arab separatists, convicted of carrying out the bombings in 2005.
Casualties up until 2007: altogether 130 people (109 civilians, 21 military and other) have died from the sulfur mustard attack on Sardasht in June 1987. Twenty people died in the first few hours, ten during the evacuation to other cities, and about one hundred more died in hospitals in Iran and Europe during the next month. Of the civilians who died, 39 were under 18 years of age, including 11 under the age of 5. Thirty-four women and girls died.
State-run television reported that at least 10 were killed and 100 injured on Saturday, as thousands of protesters swept into the streets of Tehran, in open defiance of warnings issued Friday by Iran's Supreme Leader and Security Council. State media said 457 people had been detained over Saturday's violence. . A young Iranian woman, identified as Neda Soltan, was shot by the Basij and died in front of cameras on Kargar Avenue in Tehran. Highly graphic amateur videos of the killing rapidly spread virally across the internet after being posted to Facebook and YouTube.
On 20 June – a day after Khamenei had warned of a brutal reaction if unrest continued – the Tehran ambulance service's internal radio system confirmed that at least 47 people had died, many from gunshot wounds.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/27/iran-tehran-ayotollah-khamenei-protests
On 12 January 2010, Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake, magnitude 7.0 with a death toll estimated by the Haitian government at over 300,000, and by non-Haitian sources from 50,000 to 220,000. Aftershocks followed, including one of magnitude 5.9. The capital city, Port-au-Prince, was effectively leveled. A million Haitians were left homeless, and hundreds of thousands starved. The earthquake caused massive devastation, with most buildings crumbled, including Haiti's presidential palace. The enormous death toll made it necessary to bury the dead in mass graves. Most bodies were unidentified and few pictures were taken, making it impossible for families to identify their loved ones. The spread of disease was a major secondary disaster. Many survivors were treated for injuries in emergency makeshift hospitals, but many more died of gangrene, malnutrition, and infectious diseases.
On 14 February (referred to as Day of Rage by protest organisers), about 6,000 people took part in many protests around Bahrain demanding the release of previously detained protesters, socio-economic justice, political reform and a constitutional monarchy. Police then attacked the protesters throughout the day, using tear gas, rubber bullets and shotguns, inflicting many injuries and causing the hospitalisation of four demonstrators. In the evening, Ali Mushaima died from police shotgun wounds to his back at close range. The next day, thousands of mourners attended his funeral. During the ceremony police shot Fadhel Al-Matrook in the back at close range; he died from his wounds within an hour. People were then allowed to march to and occupy Pearl Roundabout, where they began to set up tents; the number of demonstrators had swelled to 10,000 people by nightfall. King Hamad offered his condolences for the two deaths and announced the establishment of a committee to investigate the events of the previous two days. In total, 25 people were said to have been injured on 15 February.
Around 1.5 million people—20 to 25% of the population of Iran—died as a result of the Great Famine of 1870–1871.
Between 1872 and 1905, a series of protests took place in response to the sale of concessions to foreigners by Qajar monarchs Naser-ed-Din and Mozaffar-ed-Din, and led to the Constitutional Revolution in 1905. The first Iranian constitution and the first national parliament of Iran were founded in 1906, through the ongoing revolution. The Constitution included the official recognition of Iran's three religious minorities, namely Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, which has remained a basis in the legislation of Iran since then. The struggle related to the constitutional movement was followed by the Triumph of Tehran in 1909, when Mohammad Ali Shah was defeated and forced to abdicate. On the pretext of restoring order, the Russians occupied northern Iran in 1911 and maintained a military presence in the region for years to come. But this did not put an end to the civil uprisings and was soon followed by Mirza Kuchik Khan's Jungle Movement against both the Qajar monarchy and foreign invaders.
During World War I, the British occupied much of the territory of western Iran, and fully withdrew in 1921. Meanwhile, a famine in northern Iran killed between eight and 10 million people. The Persian Campaign commenced furthermore in northwestern Iran after an Ottoman invasion, as part of the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. In the course of the Assyrian Genocide of 1914–1920 and the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1917, a large number of Iranian Assyrians and Armenians were subjected to mass murders committed by the Ottoman troops that were crossing the northwestern border, notably in and around Khoy, Maku, Salmas, and Urmia.
At least 65 Palestinians, including at least 17 children, 14 women and 4 elderly were killed and 288 Palestinians were wounded according to Shifa hospital's director, Naser Tattar. The United Nations' Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People put the estimate at over 70 Palestinian dead. Other reports at the time claimed 120 Palestinians had been killed, a third women and children. According to the spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Qidra, rescue teams retrieved more than 80 dead bodies from houses destroyed in Shuja'iyya, 17 of which were children, 14 women and 4 elderly people.
Iran's Jewish population was reduced from 100,000–150,000 in 1948 to about 80,000 immediately before the Iranian Revolution, due mostly to immigration to Israel. While immigration to Israel had slowed in the 1970s and the Jewish population of Iran had stabilized, the majority of Iran's remaining Jews left the country in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Shah. In the 2000s, the Jewish population of Iran was estimated by most sources to be 25,000, (sources date from 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2006, respectively) though estimates varied, with some as low as 17,000 by 2010 and as high as 40,000 in 1998. However, the official census in August 2012 indicated that there were only 8,756 Jews still living in Iran. Notable population centers include Tehran, Isfahan (1,200), and Shiraz. Historically, Jews maintained a presence in many more Iranian cities. Jews are protected in the Iranian constitution and allowed one seat in the Majlis. After Israel, it is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East.
In 2005, Ahvaz witnessed a number of terrorist attacks, which came following the violent Ahvaz riots. The first bombing came ahead of the presidential election on 12 June 2005. In 2011, another wave of protests by Arab tribes occurred mostly in the urban area of Ahvaz. Before the Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, the Arabs of Khuzestan mostly resided in the rural regions along the Karkhe and Karun rivers in the southwest of the province and the number living in cities was very limited because the Arab tribes were still following a nomadic lifestyle. But after the end of the war, most of the refuged Arabs were relocated by the government to the urban centres and smaller towns. This conversion of lifestyle directly from nomadic to city life caused many problems and conflicts in the structure of their societies and ultimately has led to some unrest.
Reporting of casualty numbers during the invasion varied widely and fluctuated day to day. On April 10, the BBC reported that Israel estimated 150 Palestinians had died in Jenin, and Palestinians were saying the number was far higher. That same day, Saeb Erekat, on a phone interview to CNN from Jericho, estimated that there were a total of 500 Palestinians killed during Operation Defensive Shield, this figure also including fatalities outside of the Jenin camp, in other areas of the West Bank. On April 11, Ben Wedeman of CNN reported that Palestinians were reporting 500 dead, while international relief agencies were saying possibly as many as 200; he noted that his efforts to independently verify the claims had so far come to naught since people were being prevented from entering the camp by Israeli soldiers.
In October 1970, an Afghan family went on pilgrimage from Afghanistan, where smallpox was endemic, to Mashhad in Iran, triggering a massive epidemic of smallpox in Iran that would last until September 1972. By late 1971, smallpox-infected devotees on pilgrimage had carried the smallpox from Iran into Syria and Iraq.
The 1983 Sea of Japan earthquake or 1983 Nihonkai-Chubu earthquake occurred on May 26, 1983 at 11:59:57 local time (02:59:57 UTC). It had a magnitude of 7.8 on the moment magnitude scale. It occurred in the Sea of Japan, about 100 km west of the coast of Noshiro in Akita Prefecture, Japan. Out of the 104 fatalities, all but four were killed by the resulting tsunami, which struck communities along the coast, especially Aomori and Akita Prefectures and the east coast of Noto Peninsula. Images of the tsunami hitting the fishing harbor of Wajima on Noto Peninsula was broadcast on TV. The waves exceeded in some areas. Three of the fatalities were along the east coast of South Korea (whether North Korea was affected is not known). The tsunami also hit Okushiri Island, the site of a more deadly tsunami 10 years later.
A 2012 national telephone survey of a sample of 400 Iranian-Americans, commissioned by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans and conducted by Zogby Research Services, asked the respondents what their religions were. The responses broke down as follows: Muslim 31%, atheist/realist/humanist 11%, agnostic 8%, Baha’i 7%, Jewish 5%, Protestant 5%, Roman Catholic 2%, Zoroastrian 2%, "Other" 15%, and "No response" 15%. The survey had a cooperation rate of 31.2%. The margin of error for the results was +/- 5 percentage points, with higher margins of error for sub-groups. Notably, the number of Muslims decreased from 42% in 2008 to 31% in 2012.
Pars Province (; , "Ostān-e Pārs", ) also known as Fars (, "Fārs") or Persia in the Greek sources in historical context, is one of the thirty-one provinces of Iran and known as the cultural capital of the country. It is in the south of the country, in Iran's Region 2, and its administrative center is Shiraz. It has an area of 122,400 km². In 2011, this province had a population of 4.6 million people, of which 67.6% were registered as urban dwellers (urban/suburbs), 32.1% villagers (small town/rural), and 0.3% nomad tribes. The etymology of the word "Persian" (From Latin "Persia", from Ancient Greek , "Persís"), found in many ancient names associated with Iran, is derived from the historical importance of this region. Fars Province is the original homeland of the Persian people.
On 6 July 2009, about 2,000 Muslims of the Egyptian community and other nationalities in Germany held funeral prayers for El-Sherbini, in Dar Al-Salam Mosque, in Berlin. Five days later a public memorial was organized by civil rights groups in Dresden; it was attended by more than 1,000 people, including the Egyptian ambassador and officials from the state of Saxony; white roses and photos of El-Sherbini and her family were placed outside Dresden City Hall. About the same time, the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, where El-Sherbini's husband researches, issued a statement on the occasion of the official ceremony, expressing shock and sympathy. This was preceded by the Max Planck Society having strongly condemned the attack on 8 July, by stating: "The fact that the attack was racially motivated is especially distressing to us, considering that the Max Planck Society is a scientific research organisation with staff members from the most various nations."
Iran's Jewish community is officially recognized as a religious minority group by the government, and, like the Zoroastrians and Christians, they are allocated one seat in the Iranian Parliament. Siamak Moreh Sedgh is the current Jewish member of the parliament, replacing Maurice Motamed in the 2008 election. In 2000, former Jewish MP Manuchehr Eliasi estimated that at that time there were still 60,000–85,000 Jews in Iran; most other sources put the figure at 25,000. As of 2018, only 8,500 Jews still live in Iran and they constitute 0,01% of Iranian population, a number confirmed by Sergio DellaPergola, a leading Jewish demographer.
Ahvaz County () is a county in Khuzestan Province in Iran. The capital of the county is Ahvaz. At the 2006 census, the county's population (including those portions that were later split off to form Bavi County) was 1,317,377, in 274,296 families; excluding those portions, the population was 1,127,230, in 239,666 families. The county is subdivided into two districts: the Central District and Hamidiyeh District. The county has two cities: Ahvaz and Hamidiyeh.
The earthquake caused all of Mexico City to tremble, prompting people to evacuate after the early warning system was triggered. It also generated a tsunami with waves of above tide level; and tsunami alerts were issued for surrounding areas. Mexico's president called it the strongest earthquake recorded in the country, in a century. It was also the second strongest recorded in the country's history, behind the magnitude 8.6 earthquake in 1787, and the largest recorded globally in 2017.
On 28 December 1908 a strong earthquake of magnitude of 7.1 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI, hits Sicily and Calabria. About ten minutes after the earthquake, the sea on both sides of the Strait suddenly withdrew a 12-meter (39-foot) tsunami swept in, and three waves struck nearby coasts. It impacted hardest along the Calabrian coast and inundated Reggio Calabria after the sea had receded 70 meters from the shore. The entire Reggio seafront was destroyed and numbers of people who had gathered there perished. Nearby Villa San Giovanni was also badly hit. Along the coast between Lazzaro and Pellaro, houses and a railway bridge were washed away. The cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria were almost completely destroyed and between 75,000 and 200,000 lives were lost.
The largest event prompted concern from local residents. The six borehole seismometers installed near the Basel injection well to monitor the natural background seismicity and the geothermal stimulation recorded more than 13,500 potential events connected with the geothermal project, from which 3,124 were of sufficient quality to permit [hypocenter] determinations in the period 2–12 December 2006, which spanned the main stimulation and the decline in the event rate. During the post-stimulation period from 13 December 2006 onward, a further 350 locatable events were detected up to 2 May 2007, by which time events were occurring sporadically at around one per day. In all, locations for more than 3,500 events were determined.
On December 26, 2003, the ancient city of Bam in south Iran - which is on the UNESCO list of world heritages on the account of its unique mud-brick architecture - was hit with a devastating earthquake; it severed and killed tens of thousands and ruined the city. As Mohammad Reza Shajarian had decided through the occurrences of the previous natural disasters in Iran, he organized another benefit concert by the following month which is notably documented on the DVD "Hamnava ba Bam" (“Compassion for Bam”) that is released on Delnawaz. Apart from the concert, he initiated a project to help the people after the earthquake.
Up to ninety percent of buildings and infrastructure in the Bam area were either damaged or destroyed, with 70% of houses being completely destroyed, plus 70–90% of Bam's residential areas. This left an estimated 100,000 homeless. Not a single house was standing in Baravat. An important regional center during the 16th and 17th centuries, Bam contained many buildings that were not constructed to survive such ruptures. Many houses in Bam were homemade, and its owners did not use skilled labor or proper building materials to resist earthquakes in the construction. These were often built in the traditional mud-brick style. Mohsen Aboutorabi, professor of architecture at the University of Central England, demonstrated the lack of good building materials by banging two bricks together in Bam, resulting in cracking. On the other hand, Iranian regulations laid down in the 1989 Iran seismic code. were better enforced in high rise buildings and skyscrapers.
During the nights following the earthquake, the temperatures would drop to "bitterly cold" extremes, effectively killing some survivors. Many of these individuals were living in unheated tents among the rubble which forced the coordinators to move thousands of families to heated camps on the outskirts of Bam. Unfortunately, this action was met with some resistance and resulted in many residents to stay in place. The Iranian government was, conversely, criticized for not doing enough supplying of tents. Those that owned motorized vehicles were met with jammed traffic going both ways through Bam. Survivors loaded their belongings to move elsewhere while relief supplies, volunteers, and relatives were arriving. In some areas, looters stole food from warehouses and local markets, causing the police force to react to stop further destabilization of the rescue efforts.
Before the earthquake, Bam had a population of roughly 97,000. It is one of the most popular tourism areas of Iran, one of its most popular attractions being its 2000-year-old mud-brick Bam Citadel. During the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) Bam was a large trading hub due to its location on the Silk Road. It gradually declined in significance after the Afghans invaded in 1722, serving as an army camp until its abandonment in 1932. The city became a tourist attraction in 1953, when restoration of Bam's Old Quarter began.