Stench of death in quake city

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. 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 pc 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.

‘‘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,’’ said one aid worker.

Witnesses said some 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. Residents said relief efforts were chaotic. ‘‘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,’’ President Mohammad Khatami said on state television.

The Interior Ministry confirmed on Saturday the death toll stood at 20,000, but the chaos and scale of the disaster made it difficult for officials to produce exact casualty figures.

Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said he could not make any forecasts about the final toll. Officials said many survivors should have been in tents by late on Saturday, but witnesses said a number 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.

‘‘We are using our bare hands. On Friday, a baby was pushed through the rubble by its parents. The parents died. We wanted to help so much but have no equipment,’’ said a rescue worker.

In rare direct contact between Washington and Tehran, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Iran’s permanent representative to the UN, Mohammad Javad Zarif, held telephone talks about aid.

A US Air Force C-130 Hercules landed in Kerman, near Bam, with a first shipment of medical and humanitarian supplies. The US military said it planned to ship in around 70 tonnes of aid from logistics sites in the Gulf, in place for the US-led war on Iraq and its reconstruction.(Reuters)