The buildings shuddered following the explosion of a gas-consuming storage water heater at around 5:45 in the morning. The blast shook the nearby area and shattered the glasses of the adjacent buildings. A total of 15 buildings were impacted.

The building which homed the mentioned water heater was a two-storied building in Poursina Street in Mashhad.

Upon being called to the scene, around 50 firefighters rushed to the accident spot. They taped off the area and immediately started rescue operation.

According to a fire brigade official, the homes in the neighborhood, apart from the three collapsed, have been damaged between 10 and 60 percent.

Hossein Heydari, the Deputy Attorney General of Khorasan Razavi Province, confirmed that the explosion was caused by gas-consuming storage water heater.

He added that most of the building in that neighborhood are poorly constructed and the high number of people residing in the collapsed building raised the death toll of the tragedy.

YNG/4383474, 4383933</s>MASHHAD, Aug. 25 (MNA) – A water heater has exploded in Mashhad in the country's north, causing three buildings to collapse and killing 10 people.</s>"As of now, ten people were killed in this incident," Mehdi Rezai, the deputy head of the Mashhad fire department, told the ISNA news agency, adding that five wounded people had been hospitalized.

Rezai also noted that 15 neighboring buildings had been damaged by the boiler blast that caused the collapse. The official added that the authorities were working to determine the reason behind the incident.

READ MORE: WATCH: New Security Footage Shows Moment of Deadly Genoa Bridge Collapse

The city of Mashhad is located in the northeastern part of the country, some 900 kilometers (550 miles), northeast of the capital Tehran.</s>Ten people were killed in a building collapse caused by a water heater explosion in northern Iran on Saturday, according to local media.

Five other people were injured in the incident in the northern city of Mashhad, Iran’s TASMIN news agency reported.

Local reports said the heater had exploded, causing three buildings to go down.

The cause of the heater explosion remains unknown.

Many Iranians use gas-consuming water heaters in their homes and similar explosions had taken place in the past because of gas leaks.</s>TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian media are reporting that a water heater has exploded in Mashhad in the country's north, causing a building to collapse and killing 10 people.

Five others were injured and hospitalized in the Saturday incident, according to the reports, which did not elaborate. It was one the most deadly such incidents in Iran.

Many Iranians use gas-consuming storage water heaters and similar cases in the past have been blamed on gas leakages from the heaters and a disregard for safety measures.

Saturday's report from the YJC.ir news website says the explosion happened early in Mashhad, some 900 kilometers, or 550 miles, northeast of the capital Tehran.

It said six of the victims died immediately at the site following the collapse of the two-story building and four died in the hospital.</s>A boiler explosion in Iran has killed 10 people and injured five more, destroying three residential buildings in the blast.

The tragic incident took place in a residential area of the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, Fars News reported in a Twitter post today.

As well as the three residential buildings that were completely destroyed in the blast, another 15 houses in the area were damaged.

A picture posted by Fars on Twitter showed rescue workers digging through the rubble of a building.

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We're also on Facebook /dailymirror - your must-see news, features, videos and pictures throughout the day from the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Mirror Online.</s>TEHRAN: Ten people were killed and five wounded after a boiler exploded in a residential area of the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. Three residential buildings were completely destroyed in the blast and 15 houses in the area were damaged, according to Fars. A picture posted by Fars on Twitter showed rescue workers digging through the rubble of a building.</s>TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran executed eight men convicted over the 2017 Islamic State attack on parliament and the shrine of the Islamic Republic’s founding ayatollah, the bloodiest terror attack to strike Tehran in decades, authorities said Saturday.

The June 7, 2017 attack has so far been the only assault by the Sunni extremists inside of Shiite Iran, which has been deeply involved in the wars in Iraq and Syria where the militants once held vast territory. IS has since have been beaten back by Iranian-aided Shiite militias in Iraq, as well as by a U.S.-led coalition operating in both countries, though Iran has made other arrests involving the group in the time since.

The judiciary’s official Mizan news agency announced the executions Saturday morning, but did not say when or where they took place. The head of Tehran’s Justice Department, Gholamhossein Esmaili, told Iranian state television that authorities conducted the executions days earlier but chose not to immediately announce them, likely as a security measure.

Executions in Iran are carried out by hangings.

Mizan noted in its report that the executions came after the eight men had been tried and convicted in a trial that included both eyewitness testimony and video footage showing their involvement by providing the attackers support in the days leading up to the assault.

“These eight worked directly … in martyring and wounding a number of innocent compatriots,” Mizan said.

The news agencies on Saturday named those executed as Soleiman Mozafari, Esmail Sufi, Rahman Behrouz, Majed Mortezai, Sirous Azizi, Ayoub Esmaili, Khosro Ramezani and Osman Behrouz. Over a dozen others remain on trial over the attack.

While Iran is one of the world’s top enforcers of the death penalty, such mass executions are rare. In August 2016, human rights activists criticized Iran for carrying out the mass execution of 20 convicted Sunni militants from a group identified as Jihad and Tawhid after a six-year trial. In August 2007, Iran hanged seven men convicted of rape in Mashhad at the same time.

The June 2017 Islamic State attack killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 50. It saw gunmen carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives storm the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress, starting an hours-long siege.

Meanwhile, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum on Tehran’s southern outskirts. Khomeini led the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to become Iran’s first supreme leader until his death in 1989.

The assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks in the decades after the years-long tumult surrounding the Islamic Revolution. The image of a child being passed out of a window at parliament under the watch of armed security forces remains seared in the minds of many.

Iran’s security forces responded with heavy force. Authorities arrested suspected IS militants, including their wives. In August 2017, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it detained 27 militants linked to the Islamic State group who planned to attack holy Shiite cities within the country.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard responded to the attack by launching six ballistic missiles into eastern Syria targeting IS militants. It marked the first time Iran had fired its missiles in anger since its 1980s war with Iraq.

That raised new concerns in the West about its ballistic missile program amid the unraveling of its nuclear deal with world powers. That deal is now in danger of collapse with America’s withdrawal from the accord. Economic problems, water scarcity and other woes meanwhile have led to protests in Iran.

Iran remains one of the world’s top executioners. It was second only to China in 2017 in the number of known executions carried out, conducting over 500 hangings, according to Amnesty International.

The IS executions come as controversy still swirls in Iran around the country’s mass executions of 1988 near the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Activists at the time said Iran executed as many as 5,000 people after sham trials of Communists, Kurdish separatists, political prisoners and members of an Iranian exile group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.

Those executions represent one of the darkest moments of Iran’s post-revolution history and are still not recognized by its government.

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The collapse of three buildings in Mashhad, Iran, kills ten people and injures nine others.