Rescue workers in Iran seek survivors in earthquake ruins

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, December 28, 2003

Rescue workers in Iran seek survivors in earthquake ruins

Rescue workers from different countries continued on Saturday to seek survivors vigorously in the ruins left by the devastating earthquake in Iran's southeastern city of Bam early Friday.

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Rescue workers from different countries continued on Saturday to seek survivors vigorously in the ruins left by the devastating earthquake in Iran's southeastern city of Bam early Friday.

Family members and rescuers spared no efforts to retrieve victims from the rubble. They used almost everything from bare hands to bulldozers to do the job. Some of them were exhausted and dust-shrouded.

But many residents were still buried under the crumbled houses of the quake-striken city, and their chances of survival was dimming with time trickling away.

The Iranian state TV on Saturday quoted the Interior Ministry as reporting that 20,000 people had been confirmed killed and 30,000 others injured in the tremor.

But a government official noted that "rescue workers have found more bodies. The figure is now more than 20,000." And he put the number of injured at more than 50,000.

The strong earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.3 on the open-ended Richter scale, rocked the city of Bam at 5:28 local time (0158 GMT) early Friday, Tehran University's Geophysics Institute said.

Several aftershocks, including one up to 5.3 degrees on the Richter scale, further battered the city after the 6.3 quake.

Bam suffered extremely serious damage because most of the buildings were made of mud bricks. A Swiss rescue chief added that as collapsed building seemed leaving very little air space, surviving chances for the residents were extremely low.

Some officials said the rescuers needs more people to join the digging efforts and bulldozers to clear the rubble.

Irani Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari said the survivors should stay in tents by Saturday night. But witnesses said many remained in the open as night drew closer.

The roads to some affected outlying villages were cut by the earthquake. Aid workers has set out on foot.

Television footage showed that some wounded boarded planes bound to cities around the country. An official said about 3,000 bodies have been found and buried. Over 9,000 injured had been sent to hospitals in other cities.

Bam airport has been turned into a provisional hospital.

In the afternoon, the vehicles which rushed to Bam to find relatives or offer supplies have formed a long line stretching over two kilometers.

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