Quake rescue effort strains as death toll falls

Rescue workers were running low on tents and blankets Sunday to help care for the tens of thousands of Iranians left homeless after a powerful earthquake the day before damaged or leveled more than 100 villages in the mountains northwest of Tehran.

Yet even as workers dug with shovels and bare hands through mounds of dirt and splintered debris, desperately searching for survivors -- or corpses -- the government reduced by more than half the number of suspected casualties. On Saturday, the state had said the quake killed at least 500 people and left about about 2,000 injured.

"The earthquake caused 227 deaths in the Qazvin region and three in Hamadan, and around 1,000 injured in total," state television quoted a government statement as saying Sunday.

Still, there was some confusion about the figures. In the capital of Qazvin, the province where the quake's epicenter was located, Gov. Jalaleddin Sharafi issued a statement saying that 500 burial permits had already been issued. In Zanjan province, northwest of Qazvin, an additional five bodies had been located, the state news service said -- after the lower casualty estimates were released.

There seemed to be no end to the misery that enveloped community after community in a region known mostly for its vineyards and as a weekend getaway for wealthy residents of the capital.

In the oasis village of Changoureh, official reports said that only two of the village's 100 houses were intact and that the number of confirmed dead had reached about 120.

The government said it had pitched about 4,000 tents to care for the homeless and had gotten water and electricity service to most of the needy. But in some areas, survivors were forced to huddle around campfires in the frigid night air.

Frustration and anguish were widespread. State television showed images of parents crying over their dead children, young and old huddling in the grass and debris, shocked at the magnitude of their losses.

Homes were gone. Families were gone. But so were whole communities.

"I don't know whose house is whose. I don't whose belongings are whose belongings. My father. Oh, my father," said Assad Mohammed, a Tehran resident, as he stood over a heap of tangled debris that once was his childhood home in the village of Abdareh. His father, two sisters, a nephew, a niece and other relatives had all been crushed to death.

Abdareh was among the hardest-hit villages. About 45 families have lived there, and at least 20 bodies had been recovered by late Sunday. At a cemetery overlooking the village, dazed survivors huddled in groups.

"There is nothing left to live for," cried Majid Torabi, 16, as he rested his head beside his parents' graves.

The earthquake struck at 7:38 a.m. Saturday and had a magnitude of 6.3. It was felt across eight provinces, including in Tehran, where buildings swayed but no damage was reported. It left thousands homeless, mainly in the Qazvin provincial town of Bouynzahra, the epicenter, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The casualty rate might well have been higher, but Saturday is the first day of the work week in Iran, and many men had already gone out to tend their grapes and fruit orchards.

In the past half century, 11 earthquakes have killed nearly 100,000 people in Iran.

-- Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

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