U.S. doctors busy - 4 babies, 5 operations

BAM, Iran - Weary and dusty, wheezing and bleeding, people of the quake-hit Iranian city of Bam filed into a field hospital where American volunteers worked around the clock to provide medical aid, transcending two decades of hostility between the two countries.

In their first 11/2 days in Iran, U.S. doctors and nurses treated nearly 500 people. They delivered four babies and performed five operations, including one on an Iranian soldier who shot himself after his family died in the magnitude 6.6 earthquake that struck Dec. 26.

"It's a unique and tragic situation," Dr. Dave Lawlor, a pediatric surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital, said Saturday. "People come here not just with medical problems but the incomprehensible burden of having lost 20 or more relatives."

What remains is a daunting challenge: Serious injuries, respiratory infections and dirty wounds are rife and many people, spooked by aftershocks or despondent over the deaths of family members, refuse to venture from the tents that have become their homes.

In an 18-hour shift Friday, Lawlor treated about 60 people, some with respiratory complications from digging for days for relatives trapped in the rubble.

Most people in Bam have welcomed the Americans, though some religious leaders have denounced them as spies acting under the cover of a humanitarian mission.

"We're medical doctors, not politicians," said Dr. Farbod Nasserbadi, an Iranian doctor helping to shepherd patients into the American field hospital. "We welcome doctors of all nations."

Among the volunteers are two Iranians who live in Chicago but were born and raised in Bam.

"As soon as my sister called from Tehran about the terrible earthquake, I packed my bags in 30 minutes and caught a plane," said Shawn Baniassadi, a pharmacist. "I went to my old neighborhood and it was completely flattened, like it was bombarded. No buildings were left standing."

LOS ANGELES - Iranian-American groups have raised more than $1-million to help victims of last week's deadly earthquake in Iran, money that some hope will improve relations between the countries.

"I am hoping out of this to have a new relationship going on between the United States and the Iranian government," said Reza Dehbozorgi, head of the Iranian Professionals Association of South Florida.

In Los Angeles, home to a third of the nation's 277,000 Iranian immigrants, the Iranian Muslim Association of North America raised more than $800,000 in pledges during a telethon.

"When you see those pictures, it doesn't matter if it's your relatives or your family. Everyone wants to help," said the association's president, Sadegh Namazikhah.

BAM, Iran - The earthquake that killed nearly a third of this Iranian city's people last week also devastated its archaeological jewel - the Arg-e-Bam, or Citadel of Bam, the world's largest mud-brick fortress, parts of which date back 2,200 years.

But even as aftershocks sent more of its walls crashing down, Iran's government is vowing to rebuild it.

"The citadel was almost as precious as the lives lost in the earthquake," said Fakoor Pass, director of cultural heritage for Kerman province. Officials are "100 percent sure we will" rebuild it.

Much of the historic citadel on the outskirts of the modern city collapsed like a sand castle.

The U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO - which had considered declaring the citadel a protected World Heritage Site - has offered to help reconstruct the fortress, Pass said. Several countries have also voiced interest in supporting the rebuilding, he said.

Pass predicts that rebuilding the citadel would take about 10 years and cost more than $20-million.

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