Villagers bury earthquake dead

Villagers gathered at a hilltop cemetery at dawn today to bury their dead 24 hours after a powerful earthquake in northwestern Iran flattened hundreds of villages, killing at least 220 people.

As more information became available from the remote quake zone, Iran’s official media revised down the death toll from earlier estimates of 500 dead and 1,600 injured.

An official from Iran’s Red Crescent relief organisation told state-run radio that earlier reports of the dead and injured were incorrect.

"The number of dead so far is 220, and we still do not have an official figure for the number injured," said the official.

The epicentre of Saturday’s magnitude six quake, which left thousands homeless, was in the town of Bou’in-Zahra in Qazvin province, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The quake struck at 7.30am, when most people were still in their homes of brick, stone and mud.

Among the worst hit places was the tiny village of Abdareh, about 140 miles west of the capital, Tehran.

The quake toppled Abdareh’s mosque, demolished 40 homes and left at least 20 people dead.

At the cemetery overlooking the village, scores of survivors huddled in groups, most covered in dust and dazed with grief. Men, women and children wailed in grief as they placed the dead in rows of graves carved into the dirt by bulldozers.

"There is nothing left to live for," said Majid Torabi, 16, who lay his head in the dirt beside the graves of his parents, both killed in the earthquake.

"One moment they were alive and with me, and the next moment the ground shook and everything got dark. I don’t know what to do anymore," said Torabi.

Desert and hills mark the terrain around Qazvin. The area, inhabited by tens of thousands of people, is one of Iran’s industrial centres, home to many small industries producing goods ranging from plastics to medicine and food.

Most people in the region live in villages and work in the fields, or small factories or businesses nearby.

Overnight, survivors lit small fires amid the rubble of villages to warm themselves from temperatures that plunged to 7C (44F).

Near Abdareh, at the village of Changooreh, where nearly every one of the 100 homes lost at least one person, rescue workers with sniffer dogs continued to unearth bodies from the rubble.

A cry of "Allahu Akbar," or God is great in Arabic, rose from a small crowd of rescue workers and villagers digging for bodies as the corpse of a mother clutching that of her 10-year-old daughter were found beneath the rubble early today.

Nearby, 20-year-old Hassan Mohammad Aliha sat on the rubble that was his home, beating his head and screaming for his dead mother.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society said nearly 100 villages were badly damaged or destroyed.

The quake hit the provinces of Gilan, Tehran, Kurdestan, Qazvin, Zanjan and Hamedan and was followed by several aftershocks, the state news agency said. It was also felt in Tehran, but there were no reports of damage in the capital.

About 40 of the 280 inhabitants of Garm Darreh village, in western Hamedan province, were killed, and about 80 were killed in the Qazvin area village of Kisse-Jin, according to different official reports.

Major earthquakes are not uncommon in Iran, which lies on a major seismic line. Moderate tremors are reported in various parts of the country almost daily.

The Iranian government has declared three days of mourning in the quake-struck provinces, and set up a bank account for public donations.

In Washington, US President George W Bush said the United States stood "ready to assist the people of Iran as needed and as desired".

Iran and the United States have no diplomatic ties and relations are marked by hostility.

Nevertheless, in the past Iran has accepted US aid following natural disasters.