Posted on 12/28/2003 11:08:23 AM PST by Pan_Yans Wife
The stench of death filled Iran's earthquake-devastated city of Bam on Sunday and fears of epidemics and looting grew as hopes dwindled for those still buried by a disaster that killed 22,000 people.
Aid poured in from around the world, including Iran's arch-foe the United States, to help deal with what appeared to be the world's most lethal earthquake in at least 10 years.
"The toll has risen to 22,000 dead," an official from the government of the Kerman province where Bam is located told Reuters on Sunday evening.
Cemeteries overflowed with corpses. Mullahs in shirt-sleeves rather than their usual flowing robes and wearing face-masks against the dust and smell tore sheeting to shroud corpses.
With no time to wash them according to Islamic practice, bodies brought in blankets from wrecked buildings were sprayed with disinfectant to try to guard against disease and tipped into trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers.
State television said 16,000 bodies had been recovered and buried while aid workers estimated more than 100,000 people may have been left homeless.
United Nations (news - web sites) Humanitarian Affairs Officer Jesper Lund, heading the U.N. coordination team, said 22 international search and rescue teams were still scouring the ruins for survivors but would probably soon switch to helping those already found.
The pre-dawn quake on Friday also injured about 30,000 people when it flattened about 70 percent of the mostly mud-brick buildings in the ancient Silk Road city.
Bam airport became a sprawling, makeshift hospital and rubble-strewn pavements were lined with injured, some on intravenous drips. Rescue workers said anyone still trapped could survive until Monday without water but not much longer.
"The number of dead could be far more than 20,000 -- many places are untouched. We are beginning to smell the stench of death. If we haven't cleared the area by the end of the week there will be a threat of epidemics," an Iranian rescuer said.
ARMED YOUNG MEN LOOT TENTS
There was some looting when vans of young men armed with pistols and Kalashnikov assault rifles drove into Bam and stole Red Crescent tents, while others on motorbikes chased aid trucks, picking up blankets thrown out by soldiers.
Local people and some aid workers said relief efforts were chaotic. "There is no organization. Whoever is stronger takes the aid," said resident Mehdi Dehghani.
Underlining the scale of the disaster, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, held telephone talks about aid, even though their countries have no official ties.
A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules landed in Kerman, near Bam, with a first shipment of aid and the U.S. military said it would ship in about 70 tonnes of aid originally earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq (news - web sites) after the U.S.-led war.
U.S. Central Command said American airmen and Iranian soldiers worked together to unload the plane, the first American flight into Iran since the Iranian hostage crisis ended in 1981.
Washington broke ties with Iran after students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. In 2002, Bush branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" for allegedly developing weapons of mass destruction.
President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) said Iran could not cope on its own. "Everyone is doing their best to help, but the disaster is so huge that I believe no matter how much is done we cannot meet the people's expectations."
Survivors prepared for a third night in the open among palm groves around Bam, some 600 miles southeast of the capital, Tehran, burning cardboard and any other material they could find to fend off the cold.
HOPES OF MORE SURVIVORS FADE
Ari Vakkilainnen, leading a Finnish rescue team, said on Sunday only 30 people had been dug out alive overnight and he did not think many more survivors would be found.
Dust-coated Iranian rescue worker Ahmad Ali said he lacked the tools to do his job properly.
"We are using our bare hands. On Friday, a baby was pushed through the rubble by its parents. The parents died," he said.
Roland Schlachter, leading a team from the Swiss Corps for Humanitarian Aid, said tents, heating stoves and blankets were urgently needed, as was coordination of the relief effort.
"There is actually no coordination," he said in Bam.
Rescue attempts were complicated by fears of aftershocks, which experts said could be as strong as the first quake and occur at any time over the next few weeks.
The Islamic Republic's call for help from anywhere but Israel contrasted with its rejection of international assistance in 1990 when a quake killed 36,000 people.
Until Friday, the biggest earthquake death toll in the past decade was in India, where 19,700 people died in January 2001.
Interesting. Last Iranian earthquake, US shipped aid via a chartered DC10 flown by a Ugandan crew with no American markings.
They are busy burying the dead. There is a lot of coordination going on, but it has to be prioritized.
This is a big change!
This morning, the pastor at our church led us in prayer for the people devastated by the earthquake in Iran.
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