Blizzard, snow drifts, and flooding have besieged cities in several Iranian provinces, while cutting off access to many villages in other areas.
Incessant snowfall in the northern city of Rasht over Friday and Sunday has blocked the highway linking it to the city of Qazvin. The situation has also caused authorities to ban heavy trucks from the roads leading from Gilan Province — of which Rasht is the capital — and also prevent people from from leaving the province for the capital, Tehran.
Meteorologists forecast that the skies will clear over Gilan by Saturday night but say the province is then expected to be gripped by blizzard for the next two days.
In Iran’s south, flooding has taken over entire neighborhoods in the city of Shiraz and eight counties belonging to Bushehr Province.
Fars News Agency cited the governor of Bushehr’s Dashtestan County as saying that flooding had claimed the life of a young female from a village there.
On Friday, Iranian First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri issued directives to relevant disaster management authorities for the provision of prompt relief services to those afflicted in Bushehr and Fars provinces, where Shiraz is the capital.
Across the two provinces, as well as the western Iranian Kurdistan Province and the northern West and East Azerbaijan Provinces, many villages were, meanwhile, isolated by accumulated floodwaters.
