INTERNATIONAL relief efforts gathered pace yesterday as the death toll from a powerful earthquake which devastated eastern Iran soared to more than 4,000.
President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani toured villages in the quake hit Khorasan province to assess the extent of the destruction from Saturday's quake, which registered 7.1 degrees on the Richter scale.
The official IRNA news agency said Mr Rafsanjani was scheduled to return to the Turkmenistan capital later in the day to attend a summit on Tuesday of the 10 member Economic Co operation Organisation.
Turkey, Germany, Russia, Japan and Greece pledged to send relief supplies to Iran, joining a number of nations which have sent aid shipments despite difficult relations with the Islamic Republic.
Putting aside diplomatic tensions with Tehran, the German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, said Bonn would provide at least 500,000 German marks ($294,000) in aid for Iran. "In such a situation, all other issues must remain in the background," Mr Kinkel said. "It's about helping human beings."
The German Red Cross is also preparing to send tents, blankets, clothes and food following a request for help from the Iranian Red Crescent society.
A diplomatic row between Bonn and Tehran was sparked by an April 10th ruling of a German court which held the top Iranian leadership responsible for the assassination of Iranian Kurd opposition figures in Berlin in 1992.
France sent a government chartered aircraft to Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan province, on Sunday carrying blankets, tents, clothing and food while Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf countries announced they would send aid.
Even the United States, which accuses Iran of backing terrorism, said it was prepared to provide aid through a nongovernment organisation such as the Red Cross if it received a request.
The Iranian interior ministry appealed to the international community, the public and Iranians abroad to provide aid for victims of the third major quake to rock the country this year. Iranian state television said the quake had killed more than 4,000 people.
Among the dead were 100 schoolchildren aged seven to 12 crushed to death in the village of Abiz, when the ceilings and walls of their schools collapsed. Army units and members of the Revolutionary Guards joined Red Crescent workers, volunteers and relatives in trying to find survivors but were handicapped by a lack of heavy equipment.
Local officials said a lack of heavy machinery meant about 70 per cent of the debris has not yet been searched.
The Deputy Interior Minister, Mr Rassul Zargar, said 15,500 homes were destroyed along with a "significant number" of public buildings in the towns of Qaen and Birjand.
"A lot of these buildings were supposed to have been new since they were built after the 1978 earthquake in the same region" which killed 25,000, he said, adding that the "owners of these buildings would be brought to justice."
Tehran newspapers lashed out yesterday at shoddy building practices and warned of the dangers of a strong quake in the capital, which has a population of 10 million people.