Eight people were killed Monday in three separate accidents in Iran, reported the official Iranian news agency (IRNA).
Four people were killed in a car accident on a road in the western city of Shahr-e Kord, the Persian daily Jam-e Jam said on Tuesday, cited by the agency.
The accident occurred on the road between Lordegan and Borujen after the tire of a sedan car blew out, causing it to ram into another car, it said.
Those injured were transferred to hospital, the paper said.
Iranian roads are notorious for fatal accidents, with one person killed or injured on average every 40 minutes and seven minutes, respectively.
Some 200,000 accidents are reported annually, in which over 15,000 people are killed and 87,000 injured.
In another accident, the agency said that two villagers suffocated while digging a well in the northeastern city of Shirvan in Khorasan province.
The incident happened in the village of Ali-Mohammad-Khan and the two farmers died because of accumulated gas in the deep well, which they were digging in search of water.
The number of those killed in similar incidents is expected to rise as farmers turn to digging wells in the face of a severe drought, IRNA said.
Some 13 farmers suffocated within a week last summer in two villages in the northwestern city of Bojnourd as they attempted to dig wells.
Iran is bracing for a third successive year of drought, and suffered its worst drought in three decades last year.
Last year's drought destroyed an estimated 2.8 million tons of wheat and 280,000 tons of barley, and killed off 800,000 head of livestock. Residents of 100 villages in central Iran were recently forced to leave their area in search of water.
"Water resources in 100 villages have run dry and the cattle perished," a local official told IRNA.
In another incident, two young brothers drowned in the central city of Isfahan on Monday evening. Ahmad and Hossein Razavi, aged 12 and 14, drowned while swimming in a river in the provincial city of Dorcheh.
Rescue forces recovered their bodies hours later, the agency said – Albawaba.com
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