Looters hamper Iranian quake aid efforts

Iranian security forces were sealing off access to the city to all traffic on Monday except trucks and cars carrying aid supplies and relief workers, according to officials in the administrative office of Kerman province, where the disaster occurred.

The move was taken to stem the kind of chaotic scenes of looting of the badly needed humanitarian supplies seen around the city on Sunday.

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The flood of vehicles bringing worried and grieving family members to Bam brought traffic to a standstill. Then trucks carrying aid were set upon by looters and by the time they entered the stricken city they had been cleaned out.

Locals blamed the looting on villagers from surrounding areas unaffected by the quake hoping to cash in on the disaster.

A provincial government source said Bam was also likely to be effectively quarantined from Monday as the emergency operation switched from a rescue mission to an effort to quickly recover bodies from underneath the rubble in order to avert the spread of disease.

Humanitarian aid sources said they were also looking to bring in large quantities of disinfectant.

Hopes were fading of finding any more survivors of from Friday's quake, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale.

Some officials were talking of up to 30,000 people killed in the quake. Official estimates put the death toll at over 20,000 and rising. So far around 16,000 bodies have been recovered and buried.

And three people were killed Sunday when an Iranian navy helicopter crashed just outside Bam after delivering aid, the student news agency ISNA reported. The two pilots died along with a third person on board.

So far more than 500 helicopters and planes have delivered aid and ferried the wounded out of Bam since the quake, according to Iranian officials.