Iran's 25,000 quake victims buried
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Iranian soldiers unload cooking stoves and other aid from a Ukrainian cargo plane at Kerman airport southeast of Bam on Monday.
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One Iranian family buries a son during the night and struggles to stay warm after last week's earthquake.
CNN's Matthew Chance reports Iranian officials are burying earthquake victims in mass graves in Bam.
CNN's Matthew Chance on the slim chances of finding more survivors.
CNN's Kasra Naji on the fight against time to save lives.
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BAM, Iran (CNN) -- Three days after a devastating earthquake leveled the ancient city of Bam, authorities say most of the 25,000 bodies so far discovered in the rubble have been buried in mass graves on the outskirts of the city.
The grim news came as Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, arrived in the southeastern Iranian city to inspect the damage caused by Friday's quake.
"I offer my condolences to all families, brothers and sisters who lost their loved ones in this catastrophe with all my heart," he said.
He urged all Iranians and organizations to do what they could to help, saying: "Aid should continue to come so that, God willing, it will be possible to rebuild the city of Bam better and this time stronger than before."
Khamenei was joined by other senior officials "to become further familiar with the situation in the quake-hit area" and to be "briefed on the latest relief aid provided to the survivors of the killer quake."
Though international rescue teams joined the effort to find survivors, rescuers held out little hope of finding any.
"The nature of the construction doesn't lend itself to massive voids" in which people could have survived, said Neil Hubbard, part of a British rescue team which had found no one alive in several days of searching, using sniffer dogs and high-tech sensors.
Much of the city, devastated by the 6.6-magnitude earthquake, remained unsearched Monday by rescue teams or even by any of the thousands of Iranians who picked through the wreckage.
Tens of thousands of people were homeless. Many of them slept in tents donated by international aid agencies.
Planes delivering supplies and personnel from at least 21 countries -- including the United States -- converged on the airport in the provincial capital of Kerman, where they were unloaded for the 120-mile drive to Bam.
Musavi-Lari -- also the director of the Iranian Red Crescent -- and other authorities determined Sunday that search-and-rescue teams from 16 countries were no longer needed, underscoring the lack of hope that survivors would be found.
A United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team in Bam and Kerman reported Sunday that the disaster is confined to Bam and its surroundings.
Tens of thousands homeless
Much of the devastated city had not been searched Monday by rescue teams or even by the thousands of Iranians who picked through the wreckage.
"Many, many more people remain buried under the rubble, increasing fears of a much greater death toll at the end," provincial government spokesman Asadollah Iranmanesh told The Associated Press.
A girl with a broken leg was discovered unconscious Monday in the debris left from a house, an Iranian relief worker said, according to the AP.
"The only reason she remained alive was because the roof had not totally collapsed," Shokrollah Abbasi told the AP. "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."
Mostafa Biderani and his wife, Zahra Nazari, cried near a destroyed police station, beating themselves in grief, the AP reported.
Biderani told the AP he had driven hundreds of miles to check on the safety of his son in the police station. "But all my hopes were dashed when I saw the police station had collapsed," Biderani said. "I pulled out my son with my bare hands."
U.N. aid officials said water and electricity had been restored to major parts of the city. The United Nations said there were critical shortages of medicines, plastic sheeting, kitchen sets, stoves, blankets and food.
Reformist newspapers in Iran lambasted the government as ill-prepared and blamed it for leaving Iranians living in fragile homes with no reinforcements.
Structural engineer Mohammad Ehsani said, "The technology is there to construct earthquake-protected structures."
Though the cost of building an earthquake-resistant structure is not significantly higher than ordinary construction, Ehsani said, these codes aren't followed in many countries in the region, including Iran.
Even new construction does not follow building codes, he said. A similar earthquake in the Iranian capital of Tehran "would be quite tragic," he added.
-- CNN's Kasra Naji contributed to this report
Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
