A 5.8 magnitude earthquake shook southern Iran early Wednesday, killing one person, injuring dozens and damaging houses in four villages near the town of Lamerd, media reports said.

State television's website reported that "an 80-year-old woman, who was injured in the earthquake, died of internal bleeding after she was taken to hospital in Lamerd."

The tremor just after midnight was followed by 11 aftershocks and 30 percent of buildings in the four villages, on the border of the southern provinces of Fars and Hormuzgan, were damaged, the state television said.

"Thirty people were injured in Lamerd and two in a village in Hormuzgan," the head of Iran's relief and rescue organisation Mahmoud Mozaffar told Fars news agency.

State news agency IRNA said the tremor was also felt on the Gulf island of Kish but gave no further details.

The US Geological Survey said the quake, which it downgraded to 5.1 magnitude from an initial 5.8, struck at 1938 GMT Tuesday (00:08 am Wednesday local time) some 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Jahrom and 975 kilometres (610 miles) southeast of Tehran, at a depth of 10 kilometres.

Iran, including the capital Tehran, sits astride several major fault lines in the Earth's crust, and is prone to frequent quakes, many of which have been devastating.

The worst in recent times, of magnitude 6.3, hit the southern city of Bam in December 2003, killing 31,000 people -- about a quarter of its population -- and destroying the city's ancient mud-built citadel.

earlier related report
6.3-magnitude quake hits Indonesia
Jakarta (AFP) July 21, 2010 - A 6.3-magnitude quake hit Indonesia's eastern North Maluku province Wednesday, the local Meteorological and Geophysics agency said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami alert.

The quake struck underwater at a depth of 105 kilometres (65 miles), 254 kilometres northeast of Ternate island at 4:16 pm (0916 GMT), according to the agency.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.