Iran ‘quake survivor’ was impostor

An Iranian man invented a story that he had been pulled alive from the rubble of his home one week after a powerful earthquake in order to get morphine, local officials said.

The official IRNA news agency said earlier on Tuesday Ahmad Habibzadeh, 40, had been rescued from the ruins left by the 6.4 magnitude earthquake which struck the southeastern Kerman province on February 22, and was taken straight to hospital.

But several local officials later contacted by Reuters said the "quake survivor" was an impostor.

Hassan Seifeddini, the top Health Ministry official in the town of Zarand close to the tremor's epicentre, said Habibzadeh had been brought to a local hospital on Tuesday morning by two friends who said they had dug him out from under the rubble.

"But when doctors checked him they became suspicious because they found no signs of dehydration or other symptoms which showed he was under rubble. But he had traces of opium in his blood," Seifeddini told Reuters by telephone.

"He was a drug addict who made up this story with the help of his friends and wanted to get help and medicine, including morphine," he said.

At least 612 people died and more than 1,400 were injured in the earthquake, which flattened several isolated mountain villages in Kerman province.

- REUTERS