Quake deaths could top 50 000

The death toll from the earthquake in southeast Iran could top 50 000, a local government official said on Tuesday, making it one of the most devastating natural disasters of modern times.

The assessment came as an army of bulldozers cleared away rubble in the historic citadel town of Bam in a race against the risks of epidemic caused by rotting corpses.

While United States teams joined the rescue effort, despite the absence of diplomatic ties between Washington and Tehran, victims of last Friday’s earthquake were being buried as soon as their corpses were unearthed.

”The number of dead could exceed 50 000 because some districts [of Bam] and some surrounding villages have not been properly searched yet,” the senior local government official in the Kerman disaster zone said, asking not to be named.

”In some instances, whole families have been wiped out and so there is nobody to inform the rescue teams,” he said.

Hundreds of bulldozers and recovery workers continued the gruesome task of pulling out corpses, 28 000 of which have already been buried, according to state radio quoting Kerman officials.

Ted Purn, a United Nations spokesperson at the base where the world body is coordinating the international side of a massive humanitarian effort involving 1 700 staff from more than 30 countries, said the real death toll of Friday’s quake may never be known.

The focus of the operation was now more on digging up dead bodies and burying them rather than looking for survivors, Purn said.

”Yesterday we heard they found three people alive. But this is now more of a recovery rather than a rescue effort. We also have teams out assessing the needs of survivors and how to get relief to them as quickly as possible,” he said.

”There may be one or two survivors who still could be found, although the chances are quite low.”

The official news agency Irna said two canaries saved two children buried under the rubble by attracting rescuers’ attention with their singing, without giving a date for the rescue.

Purn said coordination between the various international aid groups together with Iranian authorities was improving, agreeing that the first few days after the quake hit were something of a mess in terms of relief efforts.

Joining the international campaign, 80 US doctors and rescue workers have flown in to southeast Iran and were headed for the earthquake zone, local official Assadollah Iranmanesh said.

On Sunday, the first US military flight to Iran since the hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran ended in 1981 carried emergency aid to the population of Bam.

The US air force said more flights would follow, while in an interview published on Tuesday in the Washington Post, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US was ”open” to the possibility of dialogue with Iran after seeing encouraging signs.

Countries as far afield as Japan, India and Mexico have also announced their participation in the relief drive. Neighbouring war-scarred Iraq also sent a 55-strong medical team to help treat victims of the quake.

An Indian air force plane carrying relief supplies flew over Pakistan on Tuesday after authorities in Islamabad relaxed a two-year-old ban on Indian planes flying over Pakistani territory, an Indian air force official said.

Seventy percent of Bam was destroyed in the quake, which measured 6,7 on the Richter scale.

Only 2 000 people have been pulled out alive since the quake destroyed the historic city, including its ancient citadel, a world architectural heritage site and a major tourist attraction.

President Mohammad Khatami has promised to rebuild Bam within two years.

”The town of Bam must reappear on the map of Iran,” Khatami said during a meeting on Monday with members of his government, local officials and military officers at Bam airport.

”The town will be reconstructed in two years,” he said.

The oil-rich Gulf states late on Monday earmarked $400-million of aid for victims of the earthquake, hours after the UN appealed for more money as it began assessing the damage.

UN agencies, working around the clock since the quake struck, have already given about $500 000, but Rashid Khalikov, deputy director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said ”we need much more”.

Representatives from more than 20 countries, including the US, the European Union members and Norway, met in Geneva with UN aid agencies and Red Cross officials to discuss the disaster and how best to respond.

But Khalikov said: ”The biggest fear is that as soon as the news about the earthquake disappears from TV screens it will be reflected in support from the international community in terms of contributions to the activities to help the victims.” — Sapa-AFP