Press TV - Iran’s transportation minister says recent floods have closed roads to 130 villages mostly in the south of the country.

Mohammad Eslami said on Tuesday that emergency teams had been dispatched to flood-affected regions in several provinces to repair the roads.

“It is predicted that initial repair is finished soon and the situation will be restored to normal,” said Eslami, adding that a focus of the damage from the floods was the county of Kahnuj in the southeastern province of Kerman where several villages have been badly hit by the floods.

Reports on Monday suggested that less than a dozen people had been killed in the flooding that swept across various provinces in west, south, and southeast of Iran.

Eslami said several bridges had collapsed during the floods, causing road closures for the villagers in the provinces of Kermanshah, Bushehr, Kerman and Sistan and Baluchestan.

Local officials in Kerman said nearly 1,500 rural households had been affected by the floods in areas to the southeast of the province.

Reza Fallah, head of the local branch of the Iranian Red Crescent Society in Kerman, added that rescue operations had covered some 7,000 people in worst-hit regions in the province while hundreds had been evacuated to safer places.

Other reports said the floods had caused significant damage to farming in Kerman with one local official putting the toll among livestock in the region at 1,500.

The fresh wave of floods across Iran comes a year after areas in north, west, and southwest of the country were hit by massive and unprecedented rainfall, causing significant damage to the lives and properties of people living in rural regions.