TEHRAN, Iran -- Medical teams from Japan, Switzerland and France and Turkey arrived in Tehran Friday to assist in relief operations for victims of the massive earthquake that devastated northwestern Iran, killing at least 30,000 people, Iran radio reported.
The quake, now believed to be one of the worst in the country this century, hit early Thursday, measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and reducing scores of towns and villages to rubble. An Iranian reading measured the quake at 7.3.
Staggering reports of devastation came in Friday. IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, put the death toll at 30,000 by mid-afternoon, but the Iranian mission to the United Nations said the death toll was estimated at 36,000. Some 100,000 were injured and thousands were homeless.
'Whole towns were flattened like they were never there. We have no way to get to many,' Mohammad Afshar, an official of the Iranian Red Crescent relief organization, told UPI.
'For the next 10 days we will be digging through the rubble for corpses,' Afshar said. 'Roads are blocked by falling rocks, and planes have difficulty landing in the mountains of Gilan,' a province on the Caspian Sea coast hit by the quake, he said.
Reports reaching Tehran said the quake left some 112 villages in total or partial ruin on the slopes of the Alborz Mountains between the Caspian Sea and Zanjan, some 175 miles northwest of Tehran.
Iranian state radio said medical teams from Japan, Switzerland, France and Turkey landed in Tehran Friday and prepared to move to the stricken areas immediately.
A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross flew in from Switzerland and one from Doctors without Frontiers, an independent French medical group, was among the first to arrive.
Iran Airlines has flown 3,000 relief workers into the area since Thursday, and a spokesman for Minister of Roads and Transportation Mohammad Saeedi Kya said loaders, bulldozers, graders, trucks and vans have been mobilized from nine provinces to help provide access to the stricken regions.
Tehran radio said President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whodeclared three days of national mourning for the victims, visited the stricken area Friday with high-ranking Cabinet officials, giving on-the-spot instructions for relief work.
In Geneva, the League of Red Cross Societies said Friday that Iran had said it seeks only certain types of aid, such as medicines, blankets and food, and does not want doctors or search dogs, even though teams of doctors have arrived from other nations.
A request from the Iranian Red Crescent asked for medicines, antibiotics, tents, blankets and dried foods 'conforming to Islamic rules,' the League said.
At least 100 aftershocks hit the stricken area Thursday and early Friday. The strongest was reported in Iran to measure 6.5 on the Richter scale.
Gilan and Zanjun were the provinces hardest hit by the quake. More than 20,000 are reported dead in Gilan, with some 20,000 more injured. In Zanjun, more than 8,000 are estimated to have died, with more than 3,700 injured.
Afshar said Roudbar in Gilan province was the worst hit. 'This was a village in which houses were built on several terraces of the mountain slopes. All of Roudbar collapsed into the valley.' Tehran radio said 6,000 people were killed at Roudbar and 10,000 injured.
Zanjan's governor-general, Jaafar Mousavi, said 40 to 60 percent of the villages in the province were demolished, IRNA reported.
Afshar said people in the quake-hit areas 'have little means of survival. They have no basic means for cooking and no shelter.'
Iranian rescue work continued throughout Friday, and bodies are still being dug out of the debris, IRNA reported.
'There were cracks as wide as 40 centimeters (16 inches) along the Zanjan road,' said Amir Ehsan, a 21-year-old volunteer. 'The four walls of many villages were still standing but the roofs had fallen through and killed whole families inside.'
An Iranian reporter interviewing survivors in a Tehran hospital broke into tears after hearing eyewitness accounts of the disaster.
One victim, an air force lieutenant from from Manjil deep in the Alborz Mountains, said his brother and his entire family were killed instantaneously when the roof of their brick house came down on them.
He said in the Mehr Hospital that he himself broke a leg when masonry fell on it while he rescued a child. The child was unhurt, he said.
One six-year-old boy at the Mehr Hospital was in a coma after falling masonry pierced his lung.
Rescue workers set up field hospitals in the stricken areas and mass graves were dug to bury the dead. The badly injured were flown by helicopters and aircraft to Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashad and other big cities.
Gymnasiums and other sports facilities were put at the disposal of medical and relief teams apparently because available hospital space was insufficient to take all the injured victims.
Ayatollah Abdulkarim Musavi Ardebili, who led a huge number of people in prayers Friday at Tehran University, said in his sermon that the massive casualties and damage caused by the quake were the result of improperly constructed housing, IRNA reported.
He said the Iranians should rectify the building problems as a nation without calling for international assistance. He called on all Iranians to assist, saying they should not leave reconstruction to the government, IRNA said.
