Rescuers give up, hope deserts haunted Bam

With some 25,000 victims already buried and virtually no habitable buildings left standing in Bam, survivors were leaving the city in droves.

As darkness fell on the city, people huddled around openfires in front of the rubble where their homes once stood. Street lights illuminated patches of the city as power began to return. Many international rescue teams had begun packing up their sophisticated equipment by Monday night, concluding no-one could still be alive beneath the ravaged city. ‘‘The first phase is over,’’ said Thomas Krimm, spokesman of Germany’s THW disaster relief organisation. ‘‘That means the search and rescue teams are winding down their activities, although they are ready to engage if they get new indications from the local population.’’

Round-the-clock relief efforts have been hindered by piles of bodies in the streets, overflowing cemeteries, bitterly cold nights, rain, aftershocks and looting. The judiciary announced it was setting up a court in the area to bring swift justice to armed bandits, seen prowling the streets, and other criminals. President Mohammad Khatami also arrived to see the devastation which many have been blamed on poor government planning and shoddy building standards.

The first US plane landed as governments set aside political differences. The giant US Hercules C-130 arrived in the city of Kerman in southeastern Iran early on Monday carrying aid workers and medical material for rescue operations. The aid delivery is a rare action of humanitarian support for Iran by the US, which broke off diplomatic relations following the storming of the US embassy in Tehran by Islamic students in 1979. —(Reuters)