A human tragedy on a massive scale was unfolding on Saturday night amid the ruins of Bam, the historic Iranian city hit by an earthquake on Friday, as survivors tried to find food and shelter surrounded by more than 20 000 dead.
Officials said a clear death toll is impossible to pinpoint at this stage, but that it may turn out to be even higher. Many of the dead are being buried without proper identification, leaving hundreds of children unaware if their parents are alive or dead.
Relief crews have been working frantically to reach survivors buried under the rubble, but hopes of finding anyone alive are fading. With Iranian emergency services overwhelmed by the tragedy, the international community has mobilised a massive effort to help the injured and homeless who were facing subzero temperatures for a second night.
British aid workers arriving in Bam described scenes of ”utter destruction”, with many rescue workers at the United Nations World Heritage site, 70% of which is now rubble, still digging with their bare hands.
”The disaster is far too huge for us to meet all of our needs,” said Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, declaring three days of mourning. He has opened Iranian airspace to all planes carrying aid or relief workers and waived visas for foreign relief personnel.
But the death toll keeps rising. The leader of one local relief team, Ahmad Najafi, said that 200 bodies were pulled from the rubble in one street in just an hour.
The Iranian regime is already being criticised for the chaotic rescue effort. Until the arrival of Western teams, the authorities had only a few drug-sniffing dogs to look for survivors.
One local man interrupted Interior Minister Mousavi Lari Abdolvahed as he spoke to reporters in Bam on Saturday: ”My father is under the rubble,” the man said. ”I’ve been asking for help since yesterday, but nobody has come to help me. Please help me. I want my father alive.”
Lari stressed to reporters that the death toll issued by his ministry is ”only an estimate”.
”There is not a standing building in the city. Bam has turned into a wasteland,” he said.
With hospitals destroyed, military transport planes have had to evacuate many wounded for treatment to the provincial capital, Kerman, and even to the Iranian capital, Tehran, 1 008km to the northwest, where stunned families, still covered in mud, wander the airport.
At the headquarters of the relief operation, officials said the most wanted items are clothes, tents, shovels, bulldozers and excavators. — Guardian Unlimited Â