Two dead, 255 injured in Iran earthquake
AFP / AFP
Earthquake in Iran
The shallow quake hit 26 kilometres (16 miles) southwest of the city of Javanrud in Kermanshah province, the US Geological Survey said, near the site of a powerful quake last year that killed hundreds.
The head of the emergency department at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Saeb Sharidari, said the two dead were a pregnant woman and a 70-year-old man who suffered a heart attack.
State news agency IRNA quoted local officials saying that electricity had been cut to 70 villages but that it was restored to at least 50 by dawn.
It added that there had been more than 65 aftershocks.
Bazvand said at least 500 buildings had been destroyed and would need to be completely rebuilt.
There were potential problems with drinking water due to damaged infrastructure in villages, but the local Red Crescent chief, Mohammad Reza Amirian, said it had not yet been necessary to distribute food and tents.
A crisis centre was set up, with hospitals and relief organisations placed on alert.
But the local director of crisis management, Reza Mahmoudian, told the Mehr news agency that "the situation was under control" and no request for help had been sent to neighbouring provinces.
There were reports that the quake was felt far across the border into Iraq.
Images on social media showed people being rushed to hospitals, but suggested relatively light damage to infrastructure.
Iran sits on top of two major tectonic plates and sees frequent seismic activity.
Kermanshah is still recovering from a devastating 7.3-magnitude quake that struck last November, killing 620 people in the province and another eight people in Iraq.
That quake left more than 12,000 people injured and damaged some 30,000 houses, leaving huge numbers homeless at the start of the cold season in the mountainous region.
Local officials said the estimated cost of reconstruction would be measured in the billions of dollars, at a time when Iran is struggling with a deepening economic downturn.
There was criticism that much of the new social housing built as part of a scheme championed by ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had failed to withstand the tremor.
President Hassan Rouhani said those responsible would be held to account.
Iran's deadliest quake in recent years was a 6.6-magnitude tremor that struck the southeast in 2003, decimating the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killing at least 31,000 people.
In 1990, a 7.4-magnitude quake in northern Iran killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless, reducing dozens of towns and nearly 2,000 villages to rubble.
China's transport ministry censures Didi after murder
AFP/File / GREG BAKER
The killing has sparked fresh criticism of the company as angry users voiced concerns about the safety of the service
A 20-year-old female passenger was raped and killed by her driver on Friday in the eastern city of Wenzhou, barely three months after a similar incident in May.
"The Ministry demands that Didi... stops making empty promises and takes concrete steps to ensuring passengers' safety."
Among a list of demands, the ministry called on the Chinese firm, which calls itself the world's leading mobile transportation platform, to improve its driver vetting and driver education process.
The statement was released after a meeting on Sunday between the company, the public security ministry and the transport departments of Beijing and Tianjin.
Didi said earlier Sunday that it would suspend the Hitch service -- which links up commuters travelling in the same direction -- beginning midnight on Monday.
The announcement came a day after the company admitted it bore responsibility for the crime, failing to act on a complaint about the same driver from another passenger.
She claimed he drove her to an isolated area and followed her in his vehicle after she left the car.
"The incident shows the many deficiencies with our customer service processes, especially the failure to act swiftly on the previous passenger's complaint and the cumbersome and rigid process of information-sharing with the police," Didi said in a statement on Sunday.
It would also launch a review of the Hitch service and look again at its emergency response button.
The head of Didi Hitch and the vice president of customer service have been removed from their positions.
Wenzhou police said the driver, identified by the surname Chung, picked up the victim on Friday afternoon but she went missing soon after sending a friend a text message asking for help.
This prompted a manhunt which saw the driver arrested in the early hours of Saturday, police said.
- 'Get out' -
The killing has sparked fresh criticism of Didi -- which muscled Uber out of the market following a bruising battle -- as angry users voiced concern about its safety.
"Since the company can't regulate itself, get out of the market," wrote one user on the Twitter-like Weibo.
In a scathing commentary, the official Xinhua news agency on Sunday pointed out that Didi has been slapped with over one million yuan ($148,000) in fines over the past 10 months in Wenzhou alone.
"Despite repeated punishment, there has been recalcitrant behaviour and no change, a reflection of the company's indifference to safety and social responsibility," the commentary said, calling on Didi to be punished if it fails to put customer safety first.
In May a 21-year-old air stewardess using the same Hitch service was killed by a Didi Chuxing driver, prompting criticism of the company's security measures and a tightening up of its rules of use.
This included restricting Hitch drivers to only picking up members of the same sex late at night and in the early morning, and enabling passengers to share their route with an emergency contact.
Didi Chuxing says it has 30 million drivers and more than 550 million users across its various services.
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