Islamic Relief is taking donations to help deal with this disaster. See the column on the right.

Not to downplay the earthquake at all, but I noticed they have a fund to help out with famine in Africa, so I had to add a link to that as well. The African famine link may well become a permanent fixture.

Published: December 28, 2003

KERMAN, Iran, Dec. 27 — As rescue workers raced to the ancient city of Bam, officials there raised the death toll from its 12–second earthquake on Friday to 25,000, and worried that it could go much higher.

The interior minister, Abdolvahed Moussavi Lari, said on state television from Bam: "The city is ruined. More than 70 percent of it is destroyed."

Tens of thousands of the injured crowded field hospitals or lay helplessly in the streets. Survivors and rescuers dug frantically to uncover those still trapped.

In Bam, Reuters reported, one man, Taher, cried over the body of his teenage son, calling out, "Wake up, wake up!" Another parent, Fatemeh, 35, mourned her two children, saying, "I am burying myself in this grave."

Aftershocks jolted the area, shaking down the already crumbled low–rise dwellings of clay tile, brick and concrete block.

Dozens of international relief flights and supply shipments sped on their way, transporting everything from skilled rescue workers to water purification tablets. The United States said it was sending tons of medical supplies in a military airlift, as well as rescue squads and medical teams.

Most rescue workers were flying here to Kerman, to make their way by land to Bam, 120 miles to the southeast.

Iradj Sharifi, rector of the faculty of medicine in Kerman, said that in the pre–dawn earthquake, "Five thousand people were killed on the spot and there are 20,000 people under the rubble."

Brigadier Mohammadi, commander of the army in southeastern Iran, told state television, "We need help — otherwise we will be pulling corpses, not the injured, out of the rubble."

There were grim but uncertain predictions that the death toll — in a 2,000–year–old city of 80,000 people — might keep growing.

"As more bodies are pulled out, we fear that the death toll may reach as high as 40,000," said Akbar Alavi, the governor of Kerman, the provincial capital, according to The Associated Press. "An unbelievable human disaster has occurred."