IRAN U.S. offers aid to quake victims

Officials await aid organizations' word on what assistance is needed.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States will offer humanitarian aid to Iran after an earthquake in the southern part of the country killed at least 5,000 and injured 30,000, the White House said.
"I extend my condolences to all those touched by this tragedy," President Bush said in a statement Friday. "The thoughts of all Americans are with the victims and their families at this time, and we stand ready to help the people of Iran."
A senior administration official said it was too early to say what form the aid might take. The Red Cross, the Iranian Red Crescent Society and the United Nations are assessing damage, and the U.S. assistance will reflect what those organizations and what Tehran say Iran needs, the official said.
The 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck about 5:30 a.m. local time, collapsing buildings in the city of Bam in southeastern Iran, severing power lines and shutting down water service.
Bush said: "We are greatly saddened by the loss of life, injuries, and widespread damage to this ancient city."
Negotiating aid
Bush had not spoken to any Iranian leaders, said his spokesman, Scott McClellan, who was flying with the president to Texas for a weeklong holiday break at his ranch in Crawford.
McClellan said he did not know whether any aid discussions would be carried out through an intermediary organization or a third country.
The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with Iran, which Bush described, along with Iraq and North Korea, as part of the "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union speech. The United States says Iran sponsors terrorism, is trying to acquire nuclear weapons and has a poor human-rights record.
U.S. sanctions prohibit most trade with Iran, and most dealings between the countries are conducted through the auspices of Switzerland, Pakistan or international organizations.
Last year, the United States used the United Nations to channel $300,000 in humanitarian aid to Iran after a magnitude 6.1 quake killed 245 people in the northwestern part of the country.
At the scene
By nightfall Friday, little outside relief was seen in Bam, a city of 80,000 people in southeastern Iran. With temperatures dropping to 21 degrees, survivors built bonfires in the rubble-strewn streets to keep warm, many shivering in their nightclothes, the only clothes they had since the pre-dawn quake.
With hospitals in the area destroyed, military transport planes had to evacuate many wounded for treatment to the provincial capital Kerman and elsewhere. At least four C-130s had ferried out injured people so far, Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari told Iranian television, which put the number of injured at 30,000. Kerman's governor, Mohammed Ali Karimi, said the preliminary estimate of the death toll was 5,000 to 6,000, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Mourning the dead
At Bam's only cemetery, a crowd of about 1,000 people wailed and beat their chests and heads over some 500 corpses that lay on the ground as a bulldozer dug a trench for a mass grave.
"This is the Apocalypse. There is nothing but devastation and debris," Mohammed Karimi, in his 30s, said at the cemetery, where he had brought the bodies of his wife and 4-year-old daughter.
"Last night before she went to sleep, she made me a drawing and kissed me four times," he said of his daughter, Nazenine, whose body he held in his arms. "When I asked, 'Why four kisses?' she said, 'Maybe I won't see you again, Papa,'" Karimi told an AP photographer, as tears streamed down his face.