99% of Quake Victims Counted, Iran Says : Disaster: But a Red Cross official says 20,000 more may still be found. Foreign aid, meanwhile, continues to pour in.

The Iranian interior minister said Tuesday that 99% of the victims from a devastating earthquake have been counted, but a Red Cross official said the death toll could still reach 70,000.

Officials say that as many as 50,000 people have been killed, 200,000 injured and half a million left homeless by Thursday’s quake in northern Iran.

Foreign aid continued to pour into the capital, Tehran. More than 130 planes carrying relief supplies, medical volunteers and financial contributions have arrived since Sunday.

Much of the help comes from countries that Iran considers sworn enemies, including the United States.

The Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, a senior Iranian Parliament member, said Tuesday that Iran is grateful to the people of the United States, Britain and France for their help. But he added: “It does not mean we are prepared to forget our martyrs or the bloody history of our revolution.”

He added that a death order against British novelist Salman Rushdie will not be lifted just because Rushdie has pledged money for earthquake relief.

The British newspaper The Independent reported Monday that Rushdie will contribute $8,650 to help victims of the quake.

Rushdie, 42, has been in hiding since February, 1989, when Iran’s late supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordered Muslims to kill him for insulting Islam in his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Interior Minister Abdullah Nouri said Tuesday that 99% of the bodies of quake victims have been recovered but that there is still no definitive casualty count.

Christian Brauner, a relief worker with the West German Red Cross, said the death toll could reach 60,000 to 70,000.

Weary rescuers are losing hope of finding more survivors in the rubble of as many as 340 earthquake-flattened cities and towns.

But some took heart when a 1-year-old girl was found alive four days after the quake.

French and Iranian rescue teams said the girl was found in her family’s wrecked home in the mountain village of Kelishom, 30 miles east of Manjil. They had believed she was dead and were digging into the rubble of what had been a bedroom believing they would find her body.

The quake region has been jolted by about 360 aftershocks since Thursday’s jolt, some measuring up to magnitude 6, Tehran University’s geophysics center said. The main quake measured between 7.3 and 7.7.

For survivors, the aftershocks are a constant terrifying reminder of the quake. For rescuers, they have foiled desperate efforts to pluck life from the devastation.

A French rescue team related the story of one such near-rescue. The team, using sound detectors, picked up the sound of a knock on Sunday morning. They quickly set to work removing debris piled several yards deep.

But then a strong aftershock struck, sending dirt and debris cascading back into the excavated area.

When the team was able to resume digging, the knocking had stopped, said the team leader, Andre Laska. They found a woman dead in what had once been a closet in her home.

“We were really, really sad,” rescuer Francis Piat said. He said that was the closest his team had come to finding someone alive under the rubble.