Major quake devastates Iranian city, death toll at 5,000

KERMAN, Iran — Entire blocks of buildings lay crushed and survivors lined up blanket-wrapped bodies in the street after a devastating earthquake leveled nearly three-quarters of the Iranian city of Bam on Friday, killing at least 5,000 people and injuring 30,000 others.

The quake also destroyed much of Bam's historic landmark — a giant medieval fortress complex of towers, domes and walls, all made of mud-brick, overlooking a walled Old City, parts of which date back 2,000 years. Television images showed the highest part of the fort — including its distinctive square tower — crumbled like a sand castle down the side of the hill, though some walls still stood.

Local officials said the death toll could reach up to 12,000, though the deputy governor of Kerman province said an accurate count was impossible with many victims still trapped under the rubble. "Rescue operations are going slowly because of darkness," deputy governor Mohammad Farshad said.

"The disaster is far too huge for us to meet all of our needs," President Mohammad Khatami said. "However, all the institutions have been mobilized."

The government asked for international assistance, particularly search and rescue teams. The United States promised to send aid, as did numerous European nations.

By nightfall Friday, little outside relief was seen in Bam, a city of 80,000 people in southeastern Iran. With temperatures dropping to 21 degrees, survivors built bonfires in the rubble-strewn streets to keep warm, many shivering in their nightclothes, they only clothes they had since the pre-dawn quake.

With hospitals in the area destroyed, military transport planes had to evacuate many wounded for treatment to the provincial capital Kerman and elsewhere. At least four C-130s had ferried out injured so far, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari told Iranian television, which put the number of injured at 30,000. Kerman's governor, Mohammed Ali Karimi, said the preliminary estimate of the death toll was 5,000 to 6,000, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

At Bam's only cemetery, a crowd of about 1,000 people wailed and beat their chests and heads over some 500 corpses that lay on the ground as a bulldozen dug a trench for a mass grave.

"This is the Apocalypse. There is nothing but devastation and debris," Mohammed Karimi, in his 30s, said at the cemetery, where he had brought the bodies of his wife and 4-year-old daughter.