Iranian earthquake survivors mark day of mass mournings for dead

KERMAN, Iran — Mehrdad Vakili remembers his father screaming, "Get out of the house!" as Iran's devastating earthquake began shaking the walls of the family's home. The 12-year-old boy ran but was immediately pinned by rubble.

Mehrdad was rescued. His father and younger brother were not.

"I don't want to live without them," Mehrdad said Thursday as a female relative dabbed his tears with a handkerchief at his bedside in a Kerman hospital, where he was recovering from a broken leg and severe stomach wounds.

Survivors brought to the provincial capital recounted narrow brushes with death during the Dec. 26 earthquake that struck at dawn, wiping out entire families in their homes, killing nearly 30,000 people and devastating the city of Bam.

In the flattened city, U.S. aid workers began admitting patients to an American field hospital — a rare contact between the nations since U.S.-Iranian relations were broken by the seizure of the embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Taking their first look at the damage, six American aid workers passed the mangled remains of crushed cars and people still sifting through the wreckage for their battered possessions.

Robert Dube, of the Urban Search and Rescue Unit from Fairfax, Va., recalled a 1999 quake in western Turkey that killed 17,000 people.

"The one in Turkey was the worst, and this is worse than that," Dube said. "The destruction is just complete."

U.S. officials have raised the possibility that Iran's acceptance of American aid may be a sign of slow movement toward better relations between the longtime enemies. The Bush administration decided to lift sanctions on Iran for 90 days to allow aid to enter — a step praised by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi on Thursday as "a positive step."

Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani also welcomed the U.S. move. Asked if these signals could mean improved Iran-U.S. relations, he said: "I am not sure but the signals point in that direction."

Thursday marked the seventh day after the quake and was a day of mass mourning, with Iran's supreme leader holding a memorial service in Bam. Iranian Shiites traditionally observe a mourning period for a deceased relative a week after the death.

At a cemetery outside Bam where corpses have been buried in mass graves, families clustered around burial mounds, hugging and sobbing.