Iran Quake Reportedly Kills 5,000-6,000

An earthquake devastated the southeastern Iranian city of Bam on Friday, leveling more than half the city’s houses and its historic mud-brick fortress. At least 5,000 people were killed and 30,000 injured, the region’s governor said.

The 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck at about 5:30 a.m., collapsing buildings and severing power lines.

“The quake hit the city when most of the people were in bed, raising fears that the death toll may go higher,” said legislator Hasan Khoshrou.

Mohammed Ali Karimi, the governor of Kerman province, said preliminary estimates put the death toll at 5,000 to 6,000, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Rescue teams poured in from other countries, and the United States said it would send relief aid.

“This is a terrible tragedy,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those who were injured and the families of those who were killed.”

Footage shot from a helicopter and aired on Iranian state television showed widespread devastation in Bam, with rows and rows of collapsed or damaged buildings next to others that appeared to be intact.

Earlier estimates based on helicopter survey flights said up to 10,000 people may have been killed, Khoshrou said. The estimate was later lowered.

Images shot from a moving car, accompanied by somber music, showed some houses had been reduced to nothing more than piles of brick, while men near one builidng embraced each other, shaking and sobbing. Other footage showed dead and injured being brought into hospitals with crowds of people outside.

Reports said the earthquake destroyed Bam’s medieval fortress, a massive, 2,000-year-old structure that sits on a cliff near the city and attracts thousands of tourists each year. The fortress includes scores of ancient mud huts.

“The historic quarter of the city has been completely destroyed and caused great human loss,” said Mehran Nourbakhsh, chief spokesman for Iran’s Red Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross.

The United Nation’s main cultural agency asked the Iranian government for permission to send a team of experts to survey the damaged fortress.

“We will do our best to send the best experts, the most experienced experts, to give their advice and support for the work of restoring this important site,” said Mounir Bouchenaki, a cultural heritage specialist with Paris-based UNESCO.

The U.S. Geological Survey initally reported the quake’s magnitude was 6.7, but later revised it to 6.5. It reported an aftershock of magnitude 5.4 about an hour later.

Authorities in Bam, 630 miles southeast of the capital Tehran, put out a call for blood donations.

“Many people have died,” Kerman province Gov. Mohammad Ali Karimi told state media. “Many people are buried under the rubble.”

Relief teams set up their headquarters in a public square in Bam because their offices in the governor’s building had been ruined, Karimi told state radio.

Karimi said worried relatives from surrounding areas were heading to Bam and causing massive traffic jams that were slowing rescue efforts. He urged them to stay home and wait until phone service was restored to try to find relatives.

Authorities have sent numerous rescue workers with helicopters to the area, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“We are doing everything we can to rescue the injured and unearth the dead,” television quoted Karimi as saying.

Turkey’s NTV television channel said people were streaming out of Bam for the city of Kerman, 120 miles away, and had complained they had not gotten any aid.

About 500 people have been evacuated to hospitals in Kerman, where they are in critical condition, Iranian state television reported, quoting local authorities.

The United Nations disaster management team in Tehran has asked the Iranian government if it needs help and was to meet later Friday to assess the situation, said Elizabeth Byrs, Geneva spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Hardly any buildings in Iran are built to withstand earthquakes, although the country sits on several major fault lines and temblors are frequent. An earthquake of magnitude 7.3 to 7.7 killed 50,000 people on June 21, 1990, and most recently, a magnitude 6 quake in June, 2002 killed 500 people.

Also Friday, a magnitude 4 quake rocked the west Iranian town of Masjid Soleiman at 8:10 a.m., but no casualties were immediately reported, state television said. Masjid Soleiman is about 600 miles northwest of Bam.

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On the Net:

National Earthquake Information Center: http://neic.usgs.gov