Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 25, 1990 TAG: 9006250102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RUDBAR, IRAN LENGTH: Medium
The casualty toll climbed to 50,000 dead and 200,000 wounded, according to a newspaper close to President Hashemi Rafsanjani. Official radio put the death toll at 48,000.
Army mountaineers climbed peaks in the rugged region in an effort to rescue villagers trapped in remote hamlets following Thursday's earthquake, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Tehran radio said 68 relief aircraft had landed at the capital's Mehrabad airport during a 24-hour period.
Among them was a cargo jet carrying 84,000 pounds of U.S. aid - including bandages, antiseptic burn cream, tents and orange slices in syrup - collected by Americares, a private relief organization based in New Canaan, Conn.
It was the first overt U.S. shipment of its kind to be accepted by Iran since the hostage crisis of 1980, when 52 American hostages were held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. The two nations have no diplomatic ties.
In Washington, the State Department said a Red Cross charter flight carrying supplies donated by the U.S. government was scheduled to arrive in Tehran late Sunday.
Earlier, the radical newspaper Jomhuri Islami urged that no help be accepted from the United States and other countries whose hands "are stained with the blood of the Iranian people."
The Foreign Ministry, however, said that "due to the magnitude of the disaster" Iran would accept all such aid.
"Iran accepts the assistance of all foreign countries except Israel and South Africa," Tehran radio quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Mohammad Besharati as saying.
There were conflicting death tolls. The Tehran Times, the nation's leading English-language newspaper, quoted an unidentified senior relief official as saying 50,000 people died and 200,000 were injured in the quake.
He said even that was a conservative estimate because "the figures are quoted taking account only of those who have been registered officially as dead or wounded." Many victims were not counted, he said.
In Geneva, senior U.N. relief official M'hamed Essaafi also estimated the toll would reach 50,000 dead and 200,000 wounded.
by CNB