Report: Moderate earthquake hits southern Iran

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian state TV says a magnitude 5.5 earthquake Sunday has jolted a sparsely populated area in the country's south.

The report said the quake hit Sunday evening in the district of Goharan, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran. It says many of the town buildings were damaged and that rescue workers were on the scene.

The quake affected cellular phone coverage in the region with some 15,000 populations. No casualties are reported so far.

Iran sits on a series of seismic fault lines and experiences one slight quake a day on average.

In 2003, some 26,000 people were killed by a magnitude 6.6 quake that flattened the historic southeastern Iranian city of Bam.