Iran quake kills 306, search for dead continues

Twin earthquakes that devastated rural villages in northwest Iran killed a total of 306 people, most of them women and children, Health Minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi said on Monday, adding that the search for bodies was ongoing. Another 3,037 were injured, of whom 2,011 were given first aid at the scene and the rest were taken to hospital, where 700 surgeries were performed, Vahid Dastjerdi told lawmakers in a report published on the parliament's website. "We are continuing the search for bodies," she said.  Another official addressing the lawmakers, Hassan Ghadami, a deputy interior minister in charge of crisis management, said: "Many of the victims were killed in the first hours (after the quake) due to the mass of muddy rubble... and the old structure of houses in the region." The two earthquakes, measuring 6.4 and 6.3 on the moment magnitude scale, rumbled through northwest Iran on Saturday on quick succession, levelling mud brick and concrete homes in villages to the northeast of the city of Tabriz. The head of Iran's Red Crescent, Abdolhossein Faghih, told the same hearing that 230 villages had been badly damaged, including a number totally destroyed. Others suffered moderate damage, Ghadami said. Iran's government has launched a fund to quickly rebuild homes in the mountainous region before the onset of the harsh winter in around four months. A state grant of nearly $1,000 per family has been approved, along with low-interest loans for up to $6,000. Faghih said the Red Crescent has provided relief in the meantime for the more than 16,000 people left homeless, distributing thousands of tents and blankets, and food and water. Iran rejected offers of outside help in the wake of the quakes from a number of countries, including the United States, Germany, Turkey, Taiwan, Singapore and Russia. It said it could cope with the disaster itself. "We received offers of help from several countries... but as we have sufficient men and resources we did not need this foreign aid. We thanked them for their offers," Faghih said. Authorities called off rescue operations on Sunday after saying all possible survivors had been recovered. Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating. The deadliest in recent years was a 6.6-magnitude quake which struck the southeastern city of Bam in December 2003, killing 31,000 people -- about a quarter of the population -- and destroying the city's ancient mud-built citadel.