A powerful earthquake struck southeastern Iran Friday, wrecking many buildings in the historic city of Bam and killing a "very high" number of people, officials said. State television said about 60 per cent of the buildings in Bam, a popular tourist attraction some 600 miles southeast of the capital Tehran, had collapsed in the earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale. "There is a lot of dead and injured in Bam city and all the cooperation has been done to take them out," said Mohammad Ali Karimi, governor of Kerman province. No official estimates of the number of dead or injured were available as the government mounted a major rescue operation in Bam, famed for its citadel and other centuries-old buildings. The quake struck at about 5:30 a.m. local time when most people in the city would probably have been asleep in their homes. "There was a lot of damage in (Bam)," Karimi said, adding that a crisis headquarters had been set up to deal with the situation. State media said a lot of people were "buried" under debris in Bam and issued appeals for people to donate blood. **HELICOPTERS DEPLOYED IN RESCUE ROLE*** Officials said five helicopters had been deployed to help with rescue efforts. Some 20 people had been rescued from the rubble so far, they said. The official IRNA news agency said Red Crescent rescue teams had been dispatched to the quake-hit area in Kerman province. Another quake, measuring four on the Richter scale, hit the oil producing town of Masjed Soleyman in the southwestern Khuzestan province, but IRNA said there were no reports of any damage. Quakes are a regular occurrence in Iran, which is crossed by several major fault lines in the earth's structure. In June last year, a tremor measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale hit northern Iran, killing at least 229 people and injuring more than 1,000. Some 35,000 people were killed in 1990 when earthquakes of up to 7.7 on the Richter scale hit the northwest of Iran. Tehran was hit by a quake of about seven on the Richter scale in 1830. The U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center said its measuring equipment indicated Friday's quake had a magnitude of 6.7. It said the epicenter of the "strong earthquake" appeared to be about 610 miles southeast of Tehran. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A powerful earthquake struck southeastern Iran, the historic city of Bam. (PHOTO Al-Jazeera)