Rescue Hopes Dim as Quake Toll Hits 50,000

Hope of finding more survivors trapped under the rubble of the killer earthquake that slammed mountain villages and Caspian Sea towns in northern Iran four days ago dimmed Sunday as officials upped the estimated death toll to 50,000.

Rescue efforts were hampered as the strongest aftershock yet jarred the already severely damaged rice-growing region of Rasht, 120 miles northwest of Tehran, early Sunday afternoon. The new shock, with a magnitude of 5.7, toppled the few still-standing structures and caused mudslides that temporarily closed the road linking Rasht with other destruction zones in Zanjan province.

According to Asaddollah Bayat, deputy Speaker of the Iranian Parliament who toured the devastated region, a total of 114 villages in Zanjan province were destroyed in Thursday’s earthquake, which registered at a magnitude between 7.3 and 7.7. “The extent of the damage and loss of life is so vast that the government forces, though doing their best, can do little more to rescue the injured and help the survivors,” Bayat said Sunday.

Bayat said there is still “urgent need for water, tents, clothing and medicine.” He said that crops in the richest and most important agricultural region of Iran are in danger of dying because boulders and debris block irrigation canals and streams.

Officials said the quake killed 150,000 head of cattle, and health officials are trying to dispose of the rotting carcasses, fearing contamination of water supplies and the spread of infectious diseases.

Meanwhile, an impressive international airlift of medical equipment and relief supplies continued to arrive at the Tehran airport.

Speaking in Geneva on Sunday, U.N. earthquake rescue coordinator Mohammed Essaafi said that 32 relief planes had arrived in Tehran by Sunday morning and more were on the way. West Germany alone, he said, sent 11 aircraft with more than 145 tons of supplies.

Essaafi, appointed by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to direct the relief effort, said that as many as 50,000 people may have died in the earthquake and the more than 200 aftershocks. He said the earthquake left 100,000 people injured and more than 500,000 people homeless.

The Iranian government continued to welcome the foreign assistance. But hard-liners in the fundamentalist Islamic regimes, while praising some European and Soviet aid efforts, condemned assistance from the United States as an “opportunistic measure.”

In its Sunday editorials, Jomhuri Islami, a radical fundamentalist newspaper favored by the hard-line factions of the ruling Islamic revolutionary government, said that the U.S. effort was part of a “plot” by Washington to regain influence in Iran.

“Suspicious hands are being stretched toward our nation to help,” wrote columnist Seyyed Hassan Mir-damadi.

“The criminal U.S. government is on top of it all. . . . Even under the rubble, our people chant ‘Death to America’ and demand the Almighty cut off the U.S. hands--even those stretched out to help.”

The editorial assault was apparently an effort by the ruling fundamentalists to counteract a wave of good feeling toward Americans that has swept the country in the wake of the relief offers.

Sunday evening, Iranian authorities permited a Southern Air Transport 707 chartered by AmeriCares, a relief organization with headquarters in New Canaan, Conn., to land here and unload two large crates containing medical supplies and other emergency aid for the earthquake victims.

Iranian customs agents first boarded the aircraft and carefully examined the cargo to ensure that it consisted solely of earthquake relief supplies. They also permitted two AmeriCares volunteers to unfurl an American flag bearing a poster writted in Farsi script with the following words: “With care and affection to the people of Iran from the people of the United States.”

The AmeriCares volunteers had wanted to stay behind in Iran to help with relief work, but they were only allowed to descend on the tarmac for an hour before being asked to reboard the plane and return home.

“We had very much hoped to go to the earthquake area,” volunteer Terry Tarnowski said, “but unfortunately we can’t.”

In the United States, Steve Norman, vice president of AmeriCares, said the agency hopes to send another planeload of supplies.

He said that the chartered 707 carried no American flag or other U.S. identification except the Southern Air Transport name and its registration number.

“There were some minor difficulties in clearing the plane for entry, but no more than usual,” he said.

Norman said he had heard that Operation USA, formerly OpCal, was also trying to get a direct elief shipment into Iran.

The first shipment of U.S. government relief goods was leaving Pisa, Italy, for Tehran on Sunday night, Renee Basalis of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance of the Agency for International Development said in Washington. A Red Cross plane chartered with a $66,000 U.S. grant was scheduled to take $225,000 worth of U.S. supplies to Tehran.

Basalis said the U.S. disaster assistance agency hopes to send a second plane later in the week. The spokeswoman denied reports that insufficient aid is being dispatched to Iran.

“The word we have is that the airports are jammed and planes can’t unload fast enough,” she said. “Huge amounts of supplies are coming in from all over the world. They probably have shortages of certain things, and we’ll undoubtedly learn about that later.”

The first U.S. government shipment consisted of hard hats, gloves, masks, tents, blankets and water jugs, she said, material designed to help rescue workers in the search for victims buried under earthquake rubble.

Talk on the subject of American aid coursed the old bazaars of this capital. People traded stories of seeing the first “Pan American World Airways” plane in years land at the Tehran airport, laden with supplies. But in the United States, Susan Stempel, a spokeswoman for Pan Am, said that no Pan Am plane has been chartered for relief service to Iran.

Those who secretly detest the Iranian regime viewed U.S. aid as a hopeful sign that the years of hostility between the two governments might be easing.

“After 10 years, I had almost given up hope,” confided one woman working in a European company with a branch here. “Now I can only hope there is some chance we can return to a normal life. Under this regime, we are not even safe in our own homes.”

“The people are ecstatic. They have had enough,” another person said.

Avoiding praise of the United States or Britain, the Iranian government heaped accolades on the relief provided by the Soviet Union, Kuwait, Austria, Spain and India. Newspapers told the story of an elderly Spanish woman who offered a box of cookies and a carton of milk to the earthquake victims.

The Iranian reports noted that India had sent modest aid even though it faces its own relief problems because of flooding in the Indian state of Assam. Praise for the Soviets was effusive, although Iranian journalists took care to give separate credit for aid from the predominantly Muslim Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, home of many Shiite Muslims who favor the fundamentalist Iranian state.

The Iranian government also issued a warning about some foreign assistance. Satellite transmission equipment brought in by some of the rescue units, including a British team, will henceforth be banned, it said. The government suggested that the satellite equipment might be used for espionage.

Times staff writer Don Shannon, in Washington, contributed to this report.