TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Flash floods triggered by heavy rain in northeastern Iran have left at least 11 people dead and two missing, the Red Crescent said on Saturday.
"So far 11 people have died in this accident — eight of them in Khorasan Razavi, two in Golestan and another in North Khorasan," Red Crescent rescue chief Morteza Salimi told the ISNA news agency.
Friday's storms caused flooding in five provinces and some villages remained cut off on Saturday.
The two people missing were part of a family of three whose car was washed away by the torrent in Golestan province.
One of them, a woman, has been found dead and the search is continuing for the other two.
In Khorasan Razavi, which has suffered the brunt of the human losses, flooding hit the cities of Dargaz, Quchan, Nishapur, and Kalat. Mojtaba Ahmadi, the director of the Red Crescent Society in the province, said 190 rescue workers had been dispatched to the affected areas there, alongside ambulances and aid shipments.
As many as 450 people have, meanwhile, been accommodated in temporary shelters, Ahmadi added.
Mahdi Rezayi, who is the deputy of operations at the Fire Department in Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan Razavi Province, said 40 travelers stranded on roadways had also been safely evacuated in a village in Kalat.
North Khorasan’s Shirvan county was the worst hit by the flooding, said Samad Izanlu, a deputy at the local governor’s office. Up to four villages sustained substantial infrastructural damages there and were cut off from nearby areas by floodwaters, he added.
Back in April, heavy rains caused flooding and landslides in four provinces in Iran’s northwest, killing a total of 48 people.