2 girls found alive in Iran rubble

From combined dispatches

BAM, Iran — Rescuers pulled two young girls alive from the rubble of their caved-in houses yesterday, giving new hope to search crews who had despaired of finding more survivors from last week’s devastating earthquake.

A clergyman also reported that three times yesterday, men whose bodies had already been wrapped in shrouds for burial were discovered to be alive.

More than 25,000 bodies have been retrieved since Friday’s 6.5-magnitude quake shook the ancient city of Bam and its surrounding region in southeast Iran, according to provincial government spokesman Asadollah Iranmanesh. At least 10,000 people were thought to be injured.

Two aftershocks early yesterday terrified survivors and toppled some of the few walls still standing. Later, Iran’s president and supreme leader made their first visits since the temblor, pledging to rebuild.

There were fears that the number of dead could rise as high as 40,000 as Bam passed the critical mark of 72 hours after the quake, the longest period people are expected to survive in such conditions. “Many, many more people remain buried under the rubble,” a government spokesman said.

Iranian relief worker Shokrollah Abbasi described how, using an electronic device, he and three colleagues found a young girl still alive in the rubble of her house but unconscious and with a broken leg.

“The only reason she remained alive was because the roof had not totally collapsed,” Mr. Abbasi told the Associated Press. “There was air for her to breathe. We found her in the kitchen. There was a plate of rice near her, and it appeared to me that the food had helped her remain alive.”

The bodies of a woman and boy were found nearby. The girl, who appeared to be about 12, was taken to Bam’s small airport to be flown to another city for hospital care.

“When we brought out the girl, everybody cried ‘O … this is magic,’” he said.

Reuters news agency, meanwhile, reported that a baby girl had been discovered alive in the arms of her dead mother buried under another flattened building.

Rescuers said 6-month-old Nassim had been saved by her mother’s embrace, which shielded her from falling debris.

A clergyman from the seminary town of Qom described how three times in the space of five hours he had been reciting the final prayers for unidentified men wrapped in shrouds when their bodies moved.

The first time it happened, “my friends were taking the body to place it in the grave,” Hojatoleslam Mojtaba Zonnor told the Associated Press.

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