BAM, Iran, 2 January 2004 — At first they thought he was dead, but as they dug through the ruins, the rescuers realized the young man lying alongside six corpses was blinking and mumbling.

He had been trapped under a wardrobe, which probably saved his life when the world’s most devastating earthquake in decades flattened his hometown of Bam in southeast Iran six days ago.

Yadollah Saadat, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, was rescued around midnight (2030 GMT on Wednesday) by Red Crescent workers who had all but given up hope of finding any more survivors in Bam’s mud-brick buildings, nearly all of which collapsed.

“They were taking out the corpses and they found him. They thought he was dead and then they realized he was alive,” Saadat’s wife Fatemeh Asghari, 22, said as medics treated him for a broken hip in a Red Crescent truck at Bam airport. “I can’t express how happy I am,” she told Reuters.

An ambulance medic held the dazed man’s face and asked if he could say his name. The man mumbled “Yadollah” several times in reply. His right leg appeared to be covered by a metal splint.

“You can call it a miracle or anything you like,” said Red Crescent worker Ali Asghar Namdari. “I’m just happy. At least we have saved one life. I have been in war and through many struggles and I’ve never been so happy.”

Iran state radio said a nine-year-old girl covered with dust and dirt had also been rescued from the rubble of her family’s flattened house yesterday morning. She was described as in fragile condition but no further details were given.

Many of the 30,000 killed in the pre-dawn quake which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale were buried by collapsing ceilings and debris as they slept.

Beside Saadat in his house in northern Bam were the corpses of six relatives, including two brothers. Saadat was pinned beneath a toppled wardrobe, which apparently shielded him from the falling roof and other debris.

Meanwhile, American medics, some of whom helped in rescue efforts at New York’s World Trade Center, are now trying to save lives after a killer earthquake in Iran - previously branded part of an “axis of evil” by Washington. “We’re very happy to be here,” said Gary Fleisher, a 53-year-old doctor from Boston treating a boy’s broken leg.

“At the level of the people there is no problem.” Fleisher is one of 60 American medics who, while aware of tension between the two governments, are determined to give the best care they can to casualties from the quake. Jay Schnitzer, a Boston pediatrician in a rapid reaction team who also helped treat injured in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack in New York, said he could understand why Iranians might hesitate to seek help from Americans after years of tension.

“The two countries have not spent much time interacting,” he said. “If I were them, I’d be a little nervous too.” But Schnitzer had no reservations about being in Iran. “I had no preconceived notions,” he said. “I figured they were people, just like everyone else.”

The types of injuries the doctors are treating in Bam are similar to those suffered in the Sept. 11 attacks. “Certain components are very similar,” he said. “We plan for crush injuries, falling debris, and explosion injuries.” Hundreds of lorries and pickup trucks, piled high with the flotsam of wrecked homes, are leaving this Iranian city even as villagers from outlying areas continue to flow in looking for emergency assistance.

The estimated 40,000 people who remain here are still sleeping rough in the streets outside their devastated homes, in small tents provided by the Iranian Red Crescent, as officials prepare to move them to large tent cities.

Survivors officially marked yesterday the end of the official Shiite period of mourning for the tens of thousands of dead, but with little to look forward to in the immediate future. They were largely unaware of a surprise New Year gift - Washington’s announcement that it was suspending sanctions on Iran to enable cash, relief supplies and equipment to reach them from the US.

Meanwhile, authorities and foreign experts were revising downwards the death toll from last Friday’s quake, which some officials had predicted would reach 50,000. President Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday estimated the number of dead at 40,000. A local official said late Wednesday that some 26,500 had been buried in Bam and the surrounding villages.

United Nations disaster assessment coordination team leader Jesper Lund confirmed an earlier figure of 28,000 burials, adding that some 5,000-6,000 could have been interred privately by their families.