* Two quakes hit northwest Iran near city of Tabriz
* Quakes were 6.4 and 6.3 in magnitude
* Casualties may rise as rescuers reach new areas on Sunday
* Some 16,000 people given emergency shelter
DUBAI, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Two powerful earthquakes killed
250 people and injured around 1,800 in northwest Iran, where
rescue workers frantically combed the rubble of dozens of
villages throughout the night and into Sunday as medical staff
desperately tried to save lives.
Thousands huddled in makeshift camps or slept in the streets
after Saturday's quakes in fear of more aftershocks, 40 of which
have already struck.
Casualty figures are expected to rise, Iranian officials
said, as some of the injured were in critical condition while
others were still trapped under the rubble inaccessible to
rescue workers hampered by darkness in the first hours after the
quakes.
Six villages were destroyed and about 60 sustained more than
50 percent damage, Iranian media reported. About 110 villages
were damaged in the quakes, Deputy Interior Minister Hassan
Ghadami was quoted by Fars as saying.
Photographs posted on Iranian news websites showed numerous
bodies, including children, lying on the floor of a white-tiled
morgue in the town of Ahar and medical staff treating the
injured in the open air as dusk fell.
Other images showed massive destruction wrought by the
earthquakes and rescue workers digging people out of the rubble,
some alive, many dead.
Iran is situated on major fault lines and has suffered
several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6
magnitude quake in 2003 that reduced the historic southeastern
city of Bam to dust and killed more than 25,000 people.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured Saturday's first quake
at 6.4 magnitude and said it struck 60 km (37 miles) northeast
of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 9.9 km (6.2 miles). A second
quake measuring 6.3 struck 49 km (30 miles) northeast of Tabriz
11 minutes later at a similar depth.
Ghadami said 250 people had been killed and about 1,800
injured, Fars reported. A local emergency official told the
Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) that about 2,000 people
were believed to be injured.
The second quake struck near the town of Varzaghan. "The
quake was so intense that people poured into the streets through
fear," said the news agency Fars.
COLLAPSED BUILDINGS
Hundreds of people were rescued from under the rubble of
collapsed buildings but nightfall severely disrupted emergency
efforts.
"Unfortunately there are still a number of people trapped in
the rubble but finding them is very difficult because of the
darkness," Fars quoted the national emergency head Gholam Reza
Masoumi as saying.
IRNA quoted Bahram Samadirad, a provincial official from the
coroner's office, as saying: "Since some people are in a
critical condition ... it is possible for the number of
casualties to rise."
Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar has arrived in the
area and was holding meetings with local officials meant to
coordinate the emergency response, ISNA reported.
The hospital in Varzaghan, staffed by just two doctors and
with shortages of medical supplies and food, was struggling to
cope with about 500 injured, the Mehr news agency reported.
The earthquakes struck in East Azerbaijan province, a
mountainous region that neighbours Azerbaijan and Armenia to the
north and is predominantly populated by ethnic Azeris - a
significant minority in Iran.
Its capital, Tabriz, is a major city and trading hub far
from Iran's oil-producing areas and known nuclear facilities.
Buildings there are substantially built and the Iranian
Students' News Agency said nobody in the city had been killed or
hurt.
Homes and business premises in Iranian villages, however,
are often made of concrete blocks or mud brick that can crumble
and collapse in a strong quake.
Hospitals in Tabriz took in many of the injured from the
surrounding villages, and city residents left their homes and
crowded the streets following the two quakes, residents said.
"We were in our home on the sixth floor when the earthquake
struck," said Massood, a Tabriz resident who spoke to Reuters by
phone. "It took a very long time. For about 40, 45 seconds
everything was shaking and we were ready for the building to
collapse, but nothing happened."
His family was leaving their home and was in the stairwell
when the second earthquake struck, Massood said. Ambulances were
crowding a major Tabriz hospital from about midnight onward, he
said, and a sizeable aftershock around 3 a.m. local time brought
people out of their homes again.
"I was just on the phone talking to my mother when she said,
'There's just been an earthquake', then the line was cut," one
woman from Tabriz, who lives outside Iran, wrote on Facebook.
"God, what has happened? After that I couldn't get through.
God has also given me a slap, and it was very hard."
Red Crescent official Mahmoud Mozafar was quoted by Mehr
news agency as saying about 16,000 people in the quake-hit area
had been given emergency shelter.
Iranian health minister Marzieh Vahid Dastejerdi said the
government had despatched 48 ambulances and 500 blood bags to
the worst affected areas, IRNA reported.
Officials said distribution of emergency shelter was ongoing
and a field hospital was being set up in Varzaghan on Sunday to
treat the injured.
Fars quoted Iranian lawmaker Abbas Falahi as saying he
believed rescue workers had not yet been able to reach between
10 and 20 villages. Falahi said people in the region were in
need of bread, tents and drinking water.
A local provincial official warned of more aftershocks over
the next 48 hours and urged people in the area to stay outdoors.
The Turkish Red Crescent said it was sending a truck full of
emergency supplies to the border. Turkey's Foreign Ministry said
it had informed Iran it was ready to help.