Stench of death fills city

IRAN’S earthquake-devastated city of Bam was filled with the stench of death yesterday as top foreign rescuers warned that hopes were fading for any more survivors from a disaster that killed more than 20,000 people.

From the United States to China, Britain to Australia, nations rushed to respond to Iran's appeals and sent rescue workers, doctors, tents and cash to help deal with what appeared to be the world's most lethal earthquake in at least 10 years.

"It is my impression, with the scale of the disaster, that the toll is more than 20,000," Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said live on state television yesterday.

The television said 13,000 bodies had been recovered so far while aid workers estimated more than 100,000 people may have been left homeless.

Cemeteries in Bam were overflowing with fully-clothed corpses and hundreds of bodies had been tipped into trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers, witnesses said.

The pre-dawn quake on Friday also injured about 30,000 people when it flattened about 70% of the mostly mud-brick buildings in the ancient Silk Road city.

Bam airport was converted into a sprawling, makeshift hospital and rubble-strewn pavements were lined with injured, some on intravenous drips.

"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.

Reuters witnesses saw some looting when vans of young men armed with pistols and Kalashnikovs drove into Bam and stole Red Crescent tents, while others on motorbikes chased aid trucks, picking up blankets thrown out by soldiers.

"These guys have legs and can run after trucks, the aid is meant for those like me who cannot move," said one old woman sitting at the roadside.

Local people and some aid workers said relief efforts were chaotic. "There is no organisation. Whoever is stronger takes the aid," said resident Mehdi Dehghani.

President Mohammad Khatami said Iran could not cope on its own, as authorities battled to shelter survivors from bitterly cold weather.

"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," Mr Khatami said on state television.

Mr Mousavi-Lari had said earlier he could not estimate the number of dead in the city of just under 100,000 people, where 70% of the buildings had collapsed.

A number of survivors spent the night in the open among palm groves around Bam, burning cardboard and any other material they could find to fend off the cold.

The quake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale, struck early on Friday when many people were asleep in the town, some 1,000km southeast of the capital, Tehran.

Ari Vakkilainnen, leading a Finnish rescue team, said only 30 people were dug out alive overnight.

"I do not think that many people are alive because of the structure of the buildings," he said.

Roland Schlachter, leading a team of rescuers from the Swiss Corps for Humanitarian Aid (SKH), said tents, heating stoves and blankets were urgently needed and aid was poorly coordinated.

"There is actually no co-ordination," he told German television.

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.

Meanwhile, in rare direct contact between Washington and Tehran, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, held telephone talks concerning aid.