- BAM, Iran (Reuters) - Some
50,000 people may have died in Friday's Iranian earthquake, officials told
Reuters on Tuesday, as relief workers pleaded for more aid for survivors
of one of the deadliest natural disasters of modern times.
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- "We are expecting the death toll to reach around
50,000," a senior Interior Ministry official said, sharply raising
the projected tally from the nearly 30,000 already buried.
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- Some hungry children may have died in the freezing nights
tormenting tens of thousands forced to sleep in the open at Bam, putting
a premium on blankets and clothing as well as medicines.
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- "If we consider that, on average, five people lived
in each house we can say the death toll will reach 50,000," the Interior
Ministry official said. Another official confirmed the forecast.
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- Such a figure could make the earthquake around the ancient
Silk Road city the most lethal since a tremor at Tangshan in China that
killed at least five times that many in 1976.
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- The death toll at Bam, 600 miles southeast of Tehran,
may surpass that in northwestern Iran in 1990 and be double that of quakes
in Armenia in 1988 and Gujarat in 2001.
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- Friday's tremor, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale,
struck just before dawn, killing entire families as they slept.
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- The Interior Ministry official said 80 percent of Bam's
mud-brick buildings had been flattened and that many outlying villages
had not yet been fully searched. Not only did bricks not leave the air
pockets typical of modern concrete structures but their dust would have
suffocated survivors, experts said.
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- "I CAN'T FIND MUMMY"
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- As state television reported 28,000 bodies had been buried
in mass graves, relief agencies were calling for warm clothing and blankets
to ward off the bitter overnight frost.
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- "Two children from my family, 12 and 13 years old,
survived the earthquake, but they died from exposure while out on the street
sometime Friday night," one middle-aged woman said.
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- "Half my family is still under the debris. We buried
14 family members yesterday," Marzieh added. "Writers and poets
should try to find a word bigger than 'disaster'."
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- State television broadcast harrowing scenes from hospitals
around the country. One girl, aged about six, lay in bed with tubes attached
to her nose and a bandage covering her forehead.
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- "I want to show my dolls to my mummy and tell her
what has happened to us. But I can't find my mummy," she said.
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- Another girl, Mahdie, aged nine, said she had lost a
leg when the roof of her home caved in: "My mum woke me up and told
me there was a quake. I don't know where my mum is," she said.
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- "She's dead," she sobbed.
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- HELP FROM "GREAT SATAN"
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- In Bam, armies of street cleaners using brooms, shovels
and wheelbarrows began to sweep up debris in near deserted streets.
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- The scale of the disaster, which according to U.N. estimates
damaged 90 percent of Bam's buildings, prompted swift pledges of aid, even
from nations with poor ties with the Islamic Republic.
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- Washington, which has labeled Tehran as part of an "axis
of evil" and is in turn referred to as the "Great Satan"
by hard-liners in Iran, has sent eight planeloads of medical and humanitarian
supplies as well as several dozen relief experts.
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- U.S. military planes, which began arriving at the weekend,
were the first to land in Iran since the 1981 hostage crisis in which 52
Americans were held for 444 days at the U.S. embassy.
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- Six of Iran's Arab Gulf neighbors late Monday pledged
$400 million to help Tehran with relief and rebuilding.
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- Aid workers said more was needed to assist some 100,000
people left homeless and thousands more injured in the quake.
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- "There are still gaps to be filled," said Rob
MacGillivray, emergency adviser for Save The Children in Bam.
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- Restoring medical services was a priority, he said. Bam's
two main hospitals were destroyed. Blankets, children's clothes, soap,
cooking sets and large cans for drinking water were also badly needed.
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- (Additional reporting by Parinoosh Arami in Tehran)
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