THE WAILING and sobbing of grieving relatives echoed across many villages yesterday as horrified people watched the mangled bodies of family members pulled from the rubble of Iran's huge earthquake.
Still dazed a day after the force 7.1 earthquake hit eastern Iran, men, women and children used their bare hands and spades to search frantically in the ruins of their brick homes for relatives and belongings.
During a six hour tour of this remote area close to the border with Afghanistan, there seemed to be no survivors brought out from the rubble in three totally destroyed villages where cranes were lilting heavy debris.
"I have lost my daughter," screamed one woman in her 50s, raising her arms in despair as she aimlessly roamed the dusty and rubblestrewn streets of Hadjiabad.
Her daughter was to be married soon, relatives said.
In the nearby village of Abiz, a man in his late 40s stood next to the bodies of his sons, aged four and eight, wrapped in shrouds with only their battered faces showing. The bodies were laid on what used to be their wooden front door.
"I was away from the house working. My children were alone," he cried hysterically.
A seven year old boy watched as family members took his mother's body away from their flattened home. A rescue worker, trying to comfort him, gave him biscuits. The boy was too stunned to react.
"There aren't enough women left to clean the dead women, said one cleric in reference to Islam's rite that women have to wash the bodies of dead women before burial. He said women from nearby areas were being brought in to perform the ritual.
Iran's Red Crescent Society said yesterday the toll reached nearly 2,400 people after Saturday's quake which hit 200 villages, completely destroying some of them. Thousands have been made homeless.
Hossein Maldar (20) stood on top of his flattened family brick house in Esbidan, 45 km (30 miles) southeast of the town of Qaen, near the quake's epicentre, crying and trembling over the loss of his 10 year old sister and 16 year old brother. His trousers and hands were covered in dust.
People in Qaen said about 100 houses were damaged there, but there were no signs of major damage in the town.
Most of Esbidan's 500 houses were flattened. Shoes, clothes, tea cups and even motorbikes and cars were scattered amid the piles of rubble.
"There is nothing to do. What can I do?" said Veli Mohammad Brawi (40), a wheat grower in the destitute agricultural region. Sheep grazed in wheat fields and old men rode donkeys.
People at Hadjiabad said more than 400 were killed in the village, where 40 people sobbed hysterically as they buried the body of a six year old child.
Flies buzzed over bodies in the dusty streets as many families started burying their loved ones.
A group of survivors taking refuge in black and grey tents erected by the Red Crescent said they had no food. There was no power or drinking water, they said.
Water trucks were seen making their way to some villages and the Red Crescent volunteers were handing out bread and biscuits.
Some family members stood by as a crane lifted huge slabs of concrete to recover two bodies from a destroyed house.
The despair was palpable in the villages where survivors said they were still trying to grapple with the enormity of the disaster. For now they are busy burying their dead.