The death toll in the earthquake in southeast Iran could be as high as 10,000, an Iranian legislator tells the Associated Press.
The earthquake destroyed 60 percent of the housing in the city of Bam early Friday, killing many people as they slept, state television reported.
"Many people have died," the governor of Kerman Province, Mohammad Ali Karimi, told state television. "Many people are buried under the rubble" in Bam, a city about 1,000 kilometers (630 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran.
Iranian television said the quake had a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale and its epicenter was near Bam, a city of 80,000 people.
The television's reporter in Kerman city said 60 percent of the houses in Bam had collapsed. Earlier, the television reported that all houses made of bricks had collapsed in the region. Damage was reported in three towns around Bam.
A legislator for Kerman Province, Hasan Khoshrou, said that people on the scene had told him the devastation was "beyond imagination."
"No death toll is available, but it looks to be very, very high," Khoshrou said.
The citadel of Bam was destroyed, television reported. The fortress was built of unbaked bricks about 2,000 years ago and it attracts thousands of tourists a year.
The authorities have sent numerous rescue workers with helicopters to the area, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
"We are doing everything we can to rescue the injured and unearth the dead," the television quoted Karimi as saying.
"Authorities have demanded immediate blood donations to save the lives of those who have been admitted to hospital in the provincial capital of Kerman," the newscaster said.
She added telephone links with Bam have been severed. Authorities were in contact with the Bam area through radio and satellite phone links.
The television said the quake struck at 5:28 am Iranian time (0158 GMT). There were several aftershocks, one of magnitude 5.3, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University as saying.
In Washington, the US Geological Survey reported the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.7, which is high enough to cause severe damage.
(China Daily December 26, 2003)
