Fears that a dam could break in southern Iran has prompted officials to evacuate a village as the country continues to be hit with heavy snowfalls not seen in years.
Reports on Monday said that officials had ordered the evacuation of Kazemabad, a small village on the outskirts of the city of Fasa, in the province of Fars.
The order came after the local authority responsible for water and sewerage management warned about a spillway failure at Salman Farsi Dam, which is located near Fasa. Initial reports said the villagers had resisted evacuation.
Local Iranian media said Sunday that 28 out of 31 provinces were affected by heavy rain and snowfall. According to reports, around 4,500 people were attended to on the roads and some 380 people were rescued from heavy snow. One single person was hospitalized, officials said without elaborating.
Rainfall also caused power cuts in parts of the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
The oil-rich province has reported similar outages over the past days, which reportedly affected crude production. The Khuzestan governor denied rumors earlier on Monday that the rainfall had caused blackouts in vast parts of the provincial capital of Ahwaz, saying power had been restored to most cities of the province.
Heavy precipitation and snowfalls have hit Iran in recent weeks, causing problems for people in rural areas in the north and the south of the country.
Several villages were evacuated in the southeastern province of Sistan-and-Baluchestan last month after floods hit most of the territory. Two people were killed in the floods while initial estimates suggested that some 700 residential units had been partly or mostly damaged.
