A woman with a child in the quake-hit village of Khaleq Ali, near the city of Boroujerd, Iran. (AFP)

Gajral (Iran), March 31 (Reuters): A strong earthquake hit western Iran today, killing at least 70 people and devastating villages, a provincial official said.

More than 1,200 people were injured in an area around the cities of Doroud and Boroujerd in the province of Lorestan, said Ali Barani, head of the provincial emergency team for disasters.

Some survivors were dug out of the rubble of buildings alive, rescue officials said. In the worst hit areas, brick buildings collapsed into piles of masonry and mud homes were reduced to mounds of dust. Barani said 330 villages in the area were severely damaged but the death toll was unlikely to rise much further.

“If there are any changes, it will be very few,” he said by phone from Lorestan.

Strong tremors last night helped keep the toll down because they drove many to leave their homes and take to the streets well before the big quake hit this morning.

Moussa Shaban, 42, in the quake-hit village of Garaj, said the earlier shocks had prompted his wife and six children to sleep outside but his ageing mother had refused. She was killed when the main magnitude 6.0 quake hit.

“I told her to come out, I said: ‘Don’t stay inside tonight, it’s dangerous’. But she said: ‘No, the earthquake is over’,” he said, standing next to his shattered home in Garaj, 30 km southwest of Boroujerd.

Nearby, a group of women in long black Islamic dresses wailed in mourning for Shaban’s mother and another man who was killed in the quake.

Families in other villages had similar tales about how they had managed to escape being buried under their homes.

Hospitals were full in Doroud and Boroujerd, state radio reported. Lorestan governor-general Mohammad Reza Mohseni-Sani appealed for aid from neighbouring areas.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered emergency relief sent to the quake zone, the official Iranian news agency Irna said.

The US, which has had no diplomatic ties with Iran since US diplomats were held hostage in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, also offered humanitarian assistance. “I do want to offer my country’s assistance to the people affected by the recent earthquakes in Iran,” President George W. Bush said during a visit to Mexico.

“We obviously have our differences with the Iranian government but we do care about the suffering of Iranian people,” Bush said. The US sent aid for a 2003 quake in Bam, 1,000 km southeast of Tehran.