Iran Quake Focus Now On Survivors

Aid workers sifting through the ruins of Iran's devastating earthquake said Tuesday their operation had shifted from searching for survivors to treating the injured and homeless — and burying the corpses still being pulled from the rubble.

CBS News Correspondent Thalia Assuras reports 28,000 bodies have been recovered after Friday's 6.6-magnitude quake that shook the ancient city of Bam. CBS News Correspondent Lisa Barron reports officials fear the final death toll will reach 50,000.

"We have gone out of the rescue phase and entered the humanitarian relief phase of the operation," Ted Peran, coordinator of U.N. relief operations, said. "There's always hope of pulling more survivors out ... but the window of opportunity is closing rapidly."

"Up to 100,000 people have lost their homes here," reports Barron from a Red Crescent tent city set up for survivors. "There are rows and rows of dirty white Red Crescent tents, housing those who have been left without anything.

"The big fear obviously is that disease is rife in camps like this," said Barron. "The living conditions are crowded and dirty, at best. There's a shortage of medicine everywhere in the city, because the two hospitals were destroyed in the earthquake and nothing was salvaged."

Mass graves are being dug by machines in Bam's only cemetery.

"The traditional Islamic rite is to wash the bodies before burial," said Assuras. "There hasn't been time for that. Instead, they've been sprayed with disinfectant, to prevent the outbreak of diseases."

The only American reported killed in the earthquake was Californian Tobb Dell'Oro, 41, who was visiting Bam with his fiancée, 39-year-old Adele Freedman, The New York Times reported Tuesday. They were trapped for several hours after the roof of their inn collapsed; Freedman survived, but Dell'Oro bled to death.

A State Department spokesman confirmed that one American had died and another had been injured in the quake but would not give their identities, the paper said.

At the peak of rescue efforts, 1,700 international relief workers from 30 countries had converged in Bam, Peran said. By Tuesday, the number of rescuers dropped to about 1,500 after seven teams returned home.

Meanwhile, new aid was arriving — including an American military plane carrying 80 personnel and medical supplies that landed Tuesday in Kerman, 120 miles to the northwest of Bam, said provincial government spokesman Asadollah Iranmanesh.

The American team, which reached Bam by midday, came despite long-severed diplomatic relations and President Bush's naming of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea. Seven U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes had already been sent to the earthquake zone.

The United States and Iran's neighbors in the Gulf ranked among the largest contributors to the relief effort, Iranmanesh said.

A team of Boston-area doctors and medical workers is now on the scene.

"We have trauma surgeons, burn doctors, orthopedic doctors, every kind of specialty, anesthesiology, to be able to operate within the tent," Marie LeBlanc told CBS radio station WBZ-AM. "We have operating room nurses, ICU nurses, trauma nurses, pediatric nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, biomedical engineers — every kind of specialty you would expect in a full-service hospital is readily deployable."

On Tuesday, six Gulf states pledged $400 million to help reconstruct Bam, best known as the site of the world's largest medieval mud fortress, a 2,000-year-old citadel that crumbled in the quake. The pledge came after a meeting of finance ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The traditional sun-dried, mud-brick construction of houses doomed many occupants, as it has for centuries in quake-prone Iran. Heavy roofs, often sealed with cement or plaster to keep out rain, sit atop mud-brick walls that have no support beams.

On Tuesday, residents scavenged the rubble in search of belongings. One man extracted a pair of trousers and a bottle of water from the rocks where his house used to be, only one wall left standing upright behind him. He found nothing else.

At the cemetery, white shrouds were laid out, waiting for bodies as bulldozers dug more graves. Hundreds of people gathered, sobbing for loved ones.

"There were people with some blankets, all they had, walking around with cups of tea that had been provided to them, and clearly having no idea what they were going to do next," reports Barron. "You see women and children huddled on street corners with plastic bags filled with all they have."