TEHRAN -- Relief teams are ready to be sent to the devesteded areas hit by the yeaterday earthquake in the northwestern Iran, said the administrator of "Medecins Sans Frontieres" in Iran Anne-Laure Roudier.

In an interview with IRNA here on Sunday, the MSF official said: "So far we are in the information gathering phase from all the media, then we will dispatch our fact finding and assessment team there to evaluate the situation." "In case our teams cueerntly active in Iran could not serve all the survivors, some teams from our headquarter in France will be airbourned here," she added.

The MSF official also said that, "We are now in close contact with the Iranian ministries of health, interior and the Iranian Red Crescent Society, and we have informed them about our capablities and willingness to closely cooporate with them on this huminitarian matter." The death toll from the strong earthquake which hit at least eight Iranian provinces on Saturday morning is still rising.

The governor of Bou'in-Zahra in Qazvin Province, Ali Moussavi, said that the quake had killed more than 441 people and injured over 1,159 others in the districts of Avaj and Abgarm.

The quake, measuring 6 degrees on the open-ended Richter scale, hit the northern, central and western provinces of Gilan, Tehran, Kurdestan, Qazvin, Zanjan and Hamedan at around 7:30 A.M. (0300 GMT).

Several aftershocks occured between 8:10 A.M. and 15:11 with the magnitudes of 4.8, 4.1 and 5.2 on the same day.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in Bou'in-Zahra in a 7 plus degree earthquake in September 1963.

Saturday's quakes have destroyed more than 20 villages between 50 to 90 percent in the Avaj region in Qazvin Province.