More than 100,000 killed or injured in Bam quake

On Day 3, many villages and districts still without aid

 Dec. 28 - The latest estimates of the number of casualties in the devastating earthquake in southern Iran indicate that at least 40,000 people have lost their lives, while the total number of dead and injured exceeds 100,000.

All mud-brick constructions in the quake zone have been destroyed, while only the few concrete buildings in the city of Bam have withstood the tremor and their occupants have not been harmed, according to reports from Bam and other stricken areas of Kerman Province. This clearly shows that the miserable living standards of the people of this region have been the most important factor in the astoundingly high casualty figures. The clerical regime bears prime responsibility for this crippling poverty and for failing to take any preventive measures in a region that lies on a geological fault line.

On the third day of the quake, aid has still not reached many of the villages and districts in the disaster zone and there is no news of the situation in hundreds of villages hit by the tremor. Poor road networks mean that volunteers cannot easily reach these remote areas, while the mullahs' regime has been more preoccupied with preventing any public protests by quake victims and has refused to provide the military's facilities, such as helicopters, to aid workers.

While people from all over Iran have rushed to Bam with elementary tools such as shovels and pick axes and even privately owned bulldozers to search for survivors amid the rubble, the government has done next to nothing in Bam itself. Volunteers are even digging through the rubble with bare hands.

Many of the survivors are still on the streets and there are no means of transferring them to other cities. Many of those pulled out of the rubble have died on the way to hospital.

A large number of injured people have died because the necessary medication did not arrive. There are 2,000 injured survivors at Kerman airport waiting in desperation to be transferred to other cities, while the authorities have not allocated planes to take them.

Survivors lack shelter and food in freezing temperatures. Two dozen aftershocks of the quake have added to the human toll, as the slow pace of aid effort has exacerbated the situation.

The mullahs' regime announced last night that it would not allow foreign aid workers to enter Iran, as the ruling mullahs try to prevent the revelation of the extent of the disaster and their own repressive measures. The ban on aid workers is also an attempt to keep a lid on the vast plunder of foreign aid being funneled to Iran.

Tempers flare at government in Bam

AFP, Dec. 27, Bam - As the extent of his personal tragedy sinks in, Mahmoud Galandari feels anger welling up inside. Anger at a government he says has been too slow to mobilize….

Under the rubble, he says, are the remains of his 17 brothers, sisters, their spouses and children. "They're all dead," he muttered, "and if they're not dead, they will be when that machine gets to them."….

Galandari and the other desperate souls scouring this particular backstreet of Bam feel they have good reason to complain. "We asked for help to clear the rubble. And all they did was send a bulldozer," he said, clearly seeing the use of such heavy digging equipment as a sign that there was no real effort to find survivors.

In Bam, the grim priority now appears to be finding dead bodies, loading them into pick-up trucks and driving them out of town for quick burial.

The Iranian government's refusal to publicly acknowledge any need for foreign search teams has also fueled anger in a region that is one of Iran's poorest….

That was highlighted earlier Saturday, when Iranian Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian called on international donors not to send volunteer workers, but send drugs and equipment….

Homayoun Majd, a local labourer, chips into the increasingly heated conversation: "The government gives aid to Afghanistan and Iraq, and they can't even help their own people."

Furious nods of agreement all round, and tempers rise as the Red Crescent and their bulldozer declare the find of yet another "martyr".

"Public mourning does not help afflicted people"

 Baztab website, Dec. 27 – "Facilities are close to nothing, paramedical work is slow, we were under rubble for hours and many died in the Bam airport. Please help us…" One of those injured in the Bam earthquake told this to News Network TV. He was transferred to Tehran's Mehr Abad airport along with 150 others hours after the quake struck on a plane that waited half an hour at Mehr Abad for somebody to bring a staircase and take the injured…

The president preferred to remain on his chair on the day of the incident. He only called Kerman's governor on the phone and under the lights of camera flashes and in front of reporters, told him, "Coordinate your duties well. The gentlemen here (pointing to cabinet ministers) are ready to help!"…

Mere declaration of public mourning and advising Kerman's governor to "do things well" definitely cannot be a solution to the devastating problems of those afflicted in Bam."

Neglect in saving tens of thousands of lives

Baztab website, Dec. 27 – Many of our injured countrymen in Bam died last night in the minus five degrees desert weather, because inadequate reporting by the press and officials did not allow the public to learn of the catastrophic dimensions of the incident in sufficient time, losing more than 12 hours of daytime paramedical care… The deficiency and tardiness of officials' reaction to this human catastrophe was unprecedented compared to other countries. No high-ranking official like a minister, a presidential deputy, or a top military or security commander has attended the site of the disaster, yet!

Concern over quake-stricken children being sold

Sharq daily, Dec. 31 – A group of experts on social problems who have been dispatched to Bam, warned that if the situation continues this way, the orphaned children who are in the city amongst the people, will be sold at the lowest prices until next week.

Bush keeps up pressure on Tehran

The New York Times, Jan. 1 - President Bush said Thursday that (Iran) must still rid itself of terrorists and nuclear weapons programs and open its political system before he will be ready to improve relations with Tehran.

"What we're doing in Iran is we're showing the Iranian people the American people care, that we've got great compassion for human suffering," Mr. Bush said. "The Iranian government must listen to the voices of those who long for freedom, must turn over Al Qaeda that are in their custody and must abandon their nuclear weapons program," he said.

Do dictators care for human lives?

Voice of America, Farsi service, Jan. 1 – A commentary aired on VOA said in part:

As it has been stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."….

It is the citizens' right to ask why they don't have any protection against earthquakes in the 21^st century. Why is it that instead of tackling this issue, regimes occupy themselves with pondering on how to inhibit freedom of speech and assembly, censor books and ban newspapers so that people remain unaware of their rights?

The right to life and personal security is a fundamental human right. In our time, where this right is violated in a few seconds for 28,000 people, undoubtedly there is a fundamental problem in the field of human rights.

Foreign women warned on veiling in quake-stricken city of Bam

Siahkal website, Jan. 1 – Foreign and Iranian reporters are faced with repeated warnings from bassij forces and the Guards Corps for their veiling. The clerics in Bam's Behesht-e Zahra (cemetery) who carry out the religious rituals for burying people who died in the earthquake have warned female reporters many times to cover their hair.

'I wish I could be among the earthquake stricken people of Bam so I could help them'

Parisien daily, Dec. 28 - Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance's President-elect said, "I wish I could be among the earthquake stricken people of Bam so that I could help those who are in agony because of the restrictions imposed by Iran's ruling dictatorship… "If the clerical regime had taken appropriate measures, the death toll would have been less than one thousand." Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Iranian opposition in France, does not speak about the mullahs with compromise….

She explains that she follows the news hour by hour through news agencies and western television stations. She has sent a message of support for the afflicted people.

She sadly says, "We have coordinated our efforts with the Auvers-sur-Oise municipality to send the collected funds through the Red Cross to the earthquake victims."

Continued revelations on mullahs' neglect during Bam earthquake

French MD: They practically threw us out

Iran National TV, Jan. 4 - A French physician who recently returned from Bam said, "Considering the victims in Bam's surrounding villages, 80,000 people have possibly lost their lives."

"We had taken along enough equipment to last for five days, but they practically threw us out on Friday… We could have saved at least ten people but unfortunately, my medical team and I got stuck at Mehrabad and Kerman airports for 23 hours, because of the restrictions imposed by the airport's police."

Tehran rules out U.S. political mission to Iran

AFP, Tehran, Jan. 3 - Iran has ruled out a visit by a US political mission because the Americans refuse to acknowledge the reality of the Islamic Republic, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi said Saturday.

Yunessi's remarks, reported by the student news agency ISNA, were the first official comment on reports out of Washington that Iran had rejected for the moment receiving a high-level delegation that would have discussed humanitarian issues in the aftermath of last week's earthquake.

"There can in no way be any sort of American political mission" to Iran, Yunessi said. "The American government has never accepted the reality of the Islamic Republic."

"Relations with U.S. means refraining from national interests"

Kayhan daily, Jan. 3 – Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of Kayhan pointed out: "In the present circumstances, inviting the U.S. to establish relations with Iran only means inviting the Islamic Republic to refrain from its national interests as well as its Islamic and revolutionary values. (Such proposal) must not be heeded." 

A cry from Iran: 'Hug me'

New York Daily, Jan. 4 - They hide their tiny faces under blankets. Most refuse to talk. Some won't eat. Many weep through the night. They are the orphans of disaster, an estimated 2,000 kids whose parents were taken by Iran's horrifying earthquake on Dec. 26.

Just over a week after the killer quake ripped apart the ancient city of Bam, children continue to fill Iran's orphanages as rescue workers pluck more young survivors from amid the dead in the rubble. The pain, confusion and loss suffered by the children wrenches the heart…

Knots of kids stretch out their arms or grab at passing adults for a moment of comfort or a feeling - however illusory - that everything will be all right. But for most it never will.

Alert for psychological discrepancies due to Bam earthquake

Radio Farda, Jan. 4 - A group from the United Nations for analyzing and coordinating unexpected incidents, who are present in Bam, warned that since the tragedy, many earthquake survivors have been afflicted with psychological disorder. The head of Kerman's mental health department said if these sufferings and damages are not attended to, the risk of suicide and mental disorders threatens the rest of the afflicted. Right now, thousands of survivors in Bam live without adequate shelter and clean drinking water.

Orphaned survivors are dazed, confused, scared

By James Astill

The Washington Times
January 1, 2004

BAM, Iran — They were found Friday, quietly watching the first-aid flights arriving at the Bam airport, 10 miles outside the earthquake-obliterated Iranian city.
They were Azam, Pari and Aslan, two girls and one boy, apparently brother and sisters.
But what the three mentally disabled children were doing there, where they had come from and whether their parents were dead or alive, they couldn't say.
Azam, about 12, smiles nervously at Bam's half-demolished reception center for lost children, as distracted Red Crescent workers rush about.
Unnoticed, she starts trembling and, as the spasms grow violent, topples onto the rubble-strewn ground.
An aid worker pauses by the child and takes her hand. Azam looks up, smiling lovingly, and the seizure abruptly ends.
Almost certainly orphaned, practically defenseless, Azam and her siblings are among the most wretched of Bam's victims.
Yet the city's able-minded children scarcely are better off. Of Bam's 40,000 children, probably half died in the quake, which is estimated to have claimed up to 50,000 lives.
The survivors include thousands of orphans, many of whom also have lost most of their extended families.
"The pain these children are experiencing is almost unimaginable," said Brendan Paddy of Save the Children. "In one blow, thousands of them have been killed, injured, orphaned. Children are always the most vulnerable, and these children are practically helpless."
None more so than a 4-year-old boy, who wandered into a village outside Bam over the weekend, according to Red Crescent workers in Bam. The child was crying, too traumatized to speak.
Marjan Rezvam, 13, is just a little better off. Her parents, older sister and two older brothers were killed in the quake. But, from another house, one of her aunts survived.
"She was my niece, but now she is my daughter," said Fatima Rezvam, 36, whose eldest son also was killed. "We will stay here together near the graves of our relatives, and we will build another house."
But Marjan can't stop crying. She misses her family and especially her brothers who died saving her life.
"They woke me up when the house was shaking and threw me out the door," Marjan sobs. "Then everything collapsed before they could get out, too."
How many of Bam's children survived the cataclysm, how many were orphaned and where they are is still unknown.
Foreign aid workers arriving in the city as the rescue teams leave have noticed remarkably few children among the tents and rubble of the town.
"There's a striking absence of children about the place. There are very few on the streets with the rest of the survivors," Mr. Paddy said.
"We urgently need to find out where they are and what's being done for them. This is our absolute priority here."
At the Red Crescent's reception center, Dr. Bahram Moosavi Niya has a simple explanation for the absence of children.
"Most of them are dead," he said.

Iran rescuers shift rubble with bare hands

Peyk-e- Iran News Agency: Rescue worker Omid Alipour had been given a luminous jacket but no shovel.

After a whole night clawing away at the levelled remnants of the ancient Silk Road city of Bam, shattered by a violent pre-dawn earthquake on Friday, he sheepishly admitted his team had only recovered three injured from the rubble.

"There are probably 20,000 still buried under the ruins," an exhausted, dust-covered Alipour said. "We don't have anything, just our bare hands."

The official IRNA news agency reported an international sniffer dog team had recovered 20 people alive from the debris.

Alipour's team may just have had their bare hands but they had no shortage of help.

Iranians from all corners of the country have poured into Bam to help shift the crumbled mud-brick that crushed to death at least 20,000 people and injured more than 30,000.

Blood clinics in Tehran are overwhelmed by a rush of eager donors. Collection centres for food and blankets are being set up across the capital.

But for so many people, it was too late.

Hundreds of bodies have already been tipped into broad trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers. Cemeteries were crammed to overflowing with fully-clothed corpses and the stench of death was beginning to pervade the streets.

Fatemeh, 35, was burying her two children. "I am burying myself in this grave," she said.

Taher, 50, was inconsolable, sobbing "wake up, wake up" to the body of his teenage son Farzad.

Television showed the injured, bloodied and bandaged, being crammed into aircraft and flown to cities around the country. It said 3,000 had been flown to hospitals in other cities.

Iran's normally sharply divided newspapers have united in grief across the conservative and reformist camps.

The reformist Sharq newspaper said Iranians had to learn to live with earthquakes: "Nature is not violent, it is man that makes himself vulnerable by not observing the rule of nature". It also called for enforcement of the country's widely-flouted construction laws.

Iranian earthquake experts have attacked the Islamic Republic's dismal earthquake education and public fatalism.

"Most people think what God wills, will happen. This is absolutely wrong. This thinking is poisonous," Bahram Akasheh, professor of geophysics at Tehran University, told Reuters in an interview in October.Reuters

1500 Orphans recovered after earthquake in Iran

Associated Press, Ali Akbar Dareini

Kerman, Iran- Six-year-old Atefeh Razmi plays with a puzzle in the children's care center, waiting for her parents to come pick her up. "They will come see me soon," she says, smiling.

But like the 80 other children at the Kermanian Nursery Center, Atefeh is newly orphaned: Her parents were among thousands of people killed in southeast Iran's earthquake.

 Since Friday's 6.6-magnitude quake, Iran's orphanages have been filling rapidly as aid workers sort the living from the dead and deliver young survivors to the provincial capital of Kerman, 120 miles northwest of the destroyed ancient city of Bam.

An estimated 1,500 children have been recovered without family so far and are being held at orphanages.

Wednesday brought a moment of joy: Government officials reported that two men and two women were pulled alive from the rubble late Tuesday, after rescuers had all but given up hope of finding more survivors. Normally, people trapped under collapsed buildings can survive three days, a deadline that expired Monday morning.

At the orphanage, a nurse told another tale, about a baby born the day the earthquake hit. The girl's father was killed in the quake.

Her mother had a broken back and other severe injuries and died moments after giving birth.

"She never saw her mom," said nurse Zahra Mirnajafi, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Mostly, the nurses talk about their need for more help to care for the growing number of needy orphans.

"Mister, hug me," a 2-year-old cried out to a visitor.

"Hold me," said another, as groups of children stretched out their arms to or clamped on the legs of passing adults.

Iran's government says the quake killed at least 28,000 people, but the number of those still buried in the ruins of Bam remained unclear.

A U.N. report that cited government figures said the death toll by Tuesday was at least 33,000. The report also said 30,000 people were injured, up from earlier official figures of 12,000.

Aid workers on Wednesday rushed tons of newly delivered blankets, medical supplies and generators to survivors, rushing to prevent an outbreak of disease caused by dirty drinking water.

A team of 80 U.S. medical specialists set up a field hospital in Bam, joining aid teams from more than 20 countries.

The Americans received a rare welcome in Iran, a country where Washington is dubbed "the Great Satan" and where hard-liners routinely burn U.S. flags at rallies.

U.S. team leader Bill Garvelink met several Iranian ministers on Tuesday.

He said the meetings were probably the first between U.S. and Iranian officials in Iran since the United States cut diplomatic ties after radical students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages in 1979.

President Mohammad Khatami thanked Washington on Tuesday but stressed that the aid did nothing to change frosty political ties.

In a gesture that reflected the political sensitivities, the U.S. team is not going to fly a U.S. flag over its camp, said Marty Bahamonde, a spokesman for the U.S. delegation, which consists of 60 doctors and 20 logistical experts.

As aid continued to pour in from around the world, a top priority was to prevent the outbreak of typhoid or cholera, though there have been no reports of epidemics yet.

Yet money is also needed to help the children orphaned in the quake, said Mohammad Reza Rahchamani, head of Iran's State Welfare Organization. He appealed to the international community, including Iranian expatriates.

At the children's center in Kerman, about three dozen children play with games, dolls and toy cars in a colorfully decorated room. Most have injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to broken legs.

Some, like Atefeh, can't comprehend that their parents are not coming for them. Others seem overwhelmed by fear and loneliness. One girl, age 3, sobbed and cried out for her mother.

"They are in need of affection," pediatrician Dr. Noushin Mirhosseini said.

"We are trying to partly fill the gap of their parents for them. They need to be taken care of."

Iran delays adopting out orphans

January 4, 2004

By Christian Oliver

BAM, Iran (Reuters) - Iran says nearly 2,000 young children rescued from the Bam earthquake and thought to be orphans won't be released to adoptive parents until state officials are sure their natural parents are no longer alive.

An estimated 1,800 children, some just a few months old and others up to about age 10, were found without parents or relatives in the chaotic hours after the December 26 quake destroyed the ancient city and killed at least 30,000 people.

Iranian officials said they had been flooded with requests from people around the world eager to adopt orphans after seeing broadcasts of heart-breaking images of frightened children and cherub-faced babies.

"The priority is to give the orphaned children to family relatives," Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said.

"But other people will also be considered if they are qualified," he added. "First we have to wait for a period of three months before releasing any orphans for adoption."

Mousavi-Lari told a news conference in Tehran another government minister eager to adopt an orphan himself had urged him to cut through red tape and ask the welfare organisation to allow him to quickly adopt a child.

The minister was not identified.

"There are a lot of requests from families around the country," Mousavi-Lari said. Officials from the state welfare organisation said on Sunday that at least 2,500 families in Iran had offered to adopt children.

But there have already been several cases where missing, and presumed dead, parents of children taken to a makeshift orphanage outside Bam had later been found alive.

Sometimes the parents had been injured and taken away from Bam for treatment or otherwise got separated from the children in the quake's turmoil. Most of the children have been transferred to a state shelter in Kerman, 180 km (110 miles) north of Bam.

CALLS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

"We have had a number of cases in which at least one of the parents of children we thought were orphans have been found," Interior Ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani told Reuters. "We have to wait to be absolutely certain."

The quake, which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale, killed about one-third of the ancient Silk Road city's population and destroyed an estimated 90 percent of the buildings in Bam, which is 1,000 miles (625 miles) southeast of Tehran.

International relief workers have flooded the country to search for survivors still pinned under the rubble and set up temporary shelter for the thousands displaced. The whereabouts of thousands of people is still unknown.

"We are not 100 percent sure if these children are orphans because their parents might have been only injured and taken to other cities for medical care," said a senior official of Iran's state welfare organisation, which is in charge of the orphans."

A spokeswoman for the state welfare organisation in Tehran said they had also received calls from as far away as Canada, Australia and the United States offering to adopt orphans.