Iran Quake Death Toll Rises To 2,000

Up to 2,000 people were killed in the powerful earthquake that hit eastern Iran where rescue teams and villagers searched through the rubble on Sunday for survivors.

As appeals for international aid went out, an Iranian Red Crescent statement quoted by Tehran radio said the death toll had risen to 2,000 in the earthquake which struck on Saturday with a force of 7.1 on the Richter scale.

Iranian television showed footage of mass destruction in the quake zone, with barely a wall left standing in one town and children, including crying toddlers, wandering aimlessly among the rubble.

Villagers dug with shovels and bodies were brought out from the debris slung in sheets.

A make-shift refugee centre set up in a large hall was filled with survivors ministering to children. Some were on drip feeds.

The Red Crescent said the quake, Iran's worst since 1990 when more than 35,000 were killed, hit 200 villages inflicting damage between 70 per cent and 100 per cent. The radio said 2,000 relief workers using 300 vehicles were in the area where some 10,000 houses were estimated to have been destroyed in villages in Khorasan province, which borders Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

Iran's deputy interior minister for natural disasters Rasul Zargar was quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA as saying four C-130 Hercules aircraft loaded with 80 tonnes of basic goods and other aid were ready to fly to the quake zone and four helicopters also had been allocated to help.

The radio earlier said 140 rescue teams had been sent by helicopters to the devastated area outside the towns of Qaen and Birjand to look for survivors.

Another 350 teams were on their way from other parts of Iran and army units were joining in to transport blankets, tents and food to the quake-stricken area, an agricultural region known for its saffron production.

Tehran radio reported varied numbers of people injured in the quake. On Saturday it put the number at 40,000 while on Sunday it put it at 10,000.

Qaen's governor said his region was in need of doctors, blood, tents, food, ambulances, heavy earth-moving equipment and devices used in locating survivors, the radio said.

Iran's interior ministry appealed for international humanitarian aid, saying Iran's relief agencies were ready to receive assistance from those countries that would like to assist the earthquake victims, the radio said.

The ministry said Iran was willing to set up a centre for victims of the quake in the city of Herat in neighbouring Afghanistan and help transport relief supplies to them.

The radio said France's charge d'affaires in Tehran had expressed his country's willingness to help the quake victims.

Some 70 aftershocks shook Qaen and Birjand in the hours after the quake hit the area shortly after midday, also cutting off rural power and water supplies, the radio said.

The quake also jolted Mashhad, Iran's second largest city with a population of about two million, 370 km (230 miles) northwest of the earhquake's epicentre.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed pain and sorrow and asked clergy in the stricken province to use religious endowments to help the victims.

President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, on an official visit to Tajikistan, expressed great regret and called for immediate relief to be rushed to their aid.

Officials said the injured were rushed to hospitals in nearby towns and Mashhad.

Thousands of people in the rural region were made homeless by the quake, which was felt across four provinces and a city 800 km (500 miles) away.

The stricken area is less densely populated than a region near the Caspian Sea where 35,000 people were killed by Iran's worst recorded quake, which measured 7.3, in 1990.