Foreign teams aid Iran quake rescuers
Foreign teams aid Iran quake rescuers
Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Bam, Iran
International rescue workers were scouring flattened debris for survivors in Iran's shattered ancient Silk Road city of Bam on Saturday after a violent earthquake killed more than 20,000 people.
U.S. President George W. Bush, who once branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" developing weapons of mass destruction, as well as other world leaders rushed to offer whatever help they could to the Islamic Republic.
President Mohammad Khatami has admitted Iran cannot cope on its own. The official IRNA news agency quoted Iran's Interior Ministry as saying assistance would be welcome from every corner of the globe other than Israel.
Swiss rescuers with sniffer dogs were the first foreign team to start hunting for trapped survivors, Iranian television reported.
The pre-dawn quake on Friday also injured about 30,000 people, state television said. The quake measured 6.3 on the Richter scale and struck when many people were still asleep.
Witnesses said the city's cemeteries were crammed to overflowing with fully-clothed corpses and a stench of death was beginning to pervade the streets.
The International Red Crescent has advised people to wear gloves and facemasks because of fears of an epidemic.
Taher, 50, was inconsolable, sobbing "wake up, wake up" to the corpse of his teenage son Farzad.
About 70 percent of Bam, a popular tourist spot some 1,000 km southeast of the capital Tehran with a historic citadel and other centuries-old buildings, was leveled.
Many residents were still pinned under the rubble and homeless survivors awoke from a piercingly cold night huddled under woollen blankets to find a city without water and power.
Exhausted, dust-covered rescue worker Omid Alipour said his team had dug out only three injured people during the night. "We don't have anything, just our bare hands," he said.
Reporters in the city of 80,000 said there was little sign of any aid heading out to the 120,000 or so people in the quake- stricken outlying villages.
The Interior Ministry confirmed on Saturday that the death toll now stood at 20,000, state television said.
Witnesses said hundreds of bodies had already been tipped into broad trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers. Bam airport has been converted into a sprawling, makeshift hospital.
Washington has no official ties with Tehran, but Bush said in a statement: "We stand ready to help the people of Iran."
A U.S. official said the State Department would be announcing an aid package soon.
The United Nations, European Union countries, Russia, China, Poland, Japan, Turkey and others also heeded Iran's appeals for help from the international community.
They pledged doctors, medical supplies, financial aid, and rescuers with sniffer dogs and equipment to locate survivors.
A 68-strong British rescue team with sniffer dogs, special cameras and listening devices touched down in Kerman, near Bam, early on Saturday.
"We need help, otherwise we will be pulling corpses, not the injured, out of the rubble," Brigadier Mohammadi, commander of the army in southeast Iran, told state television.
Rubble-strewn pavements were lined with injured, some on intravenous drips.
"The city of Bam must be built from scratch," said its governor Ali Shafiee.
Houses in the date-growing area are traditionally made from mud-brick, making them vulnerable to earthquakes.