BAM, Iran, 31 December 2003 — Some 50,000 people may have died in Friday’s Iranian earthquake, officials said yesterday, as relief workers pleaded for more aid for survivors of one of the deadliest natural disasters of modern times.
“We are expecting the death toll to reach around 50,000,” a senior Interior Ministry official said, sharply raising the projected tally from the nearly 30,000 already buried.
Some hungry children may have died in the freezing nights tormenting tens of thousands forced to sleep in the open at Bam, putting a premium on blankets and clothing as well as medicines.
“If we consider that, on average, five people lived in each house we can say the death toll will reach 50,000,” the Interior Ministry official said. Another senior official confirmed the forecast, though President Mohammad Khatami called it premature.
“We cannot say right now what the exact death toll is. We should wait until the rescue work and all the activities in Bam are finished,” Khatami told reporters in nearby Kerman.
The grim assessment came as the United Nations appealed for more aid and an army of bulldozers cleared away piles of rubble in the disaster zone in a race to prevent the outbreak of disease from rotting corpses.
The dead were being buried as soon as they were unearthed, while rescuers sought to identify hundreds of nameless bodies with a computer slideshow of sometimes gruesome digital photographs.
Hundreds of bulldozers and recovery workers continued the gruesome task of pulling out corpses, with 28,000 already buried, according to state radio quoting local officials. Only 2,000 people have been pulled out alive since the quake.
Ted Purn, a UN spokesman at the base where the world body is coordinating the international side of a massive humanitarian effort involving 1,700 staff from more than 30 countries, said the true death toll may never be known.
“Yesterday we heard they found three people alive. But this is now more of a recovery rather than a rescue effort,” Purn said. “There may be one or two survivors who still could be found, although the chances are quite low.”
Relief agencies called for warm clothing and blankets to ward off the bitter overnight frost. “Two children from my family, 12 and 13 years old, survived the earthquake, but they died from exposure while out on the street sometime on Friday night,” one middle-aged woman said.
“Half my family is still under the debris. We buried 14 family members yesterday,” Marzieh added. “Writers and poets should try to find a word bigger than ‘disaster’.”
State television broadcast harrowing scenes from hospitals around the country. One girl, aged about six, lay in bed with tubes attached to her nose and a bandage covering her forehead. “I want to show my dolls to my mother and tell her what has happened to us. But I can’t find my mother,” she said.
