Eleven more survivors were pulled from the devastation caused by the earthquake in southeastern Iran on Wednesday, state radio said yesterday, in a report apparently aimed at providing at least a glimmer of good news amid the devastation and death.
Rescue workers in the affected region had however expressed pessimism at the chances of finding any more people alive five days after the quake killed an estimated 40,000 people.
Some estimates have put the number of dead as high as 50,000.
State radio gave no details of the 11 people it said had been saved on Wednesday. On the previous day it had said that five people had been found alive in the rubble.
In all, some 2,000 people were found alive amid the devastation, most of them in the first days after the quake.
Around 30,000 bodies have so far been removed from the devastation and buried in makeshift graves.
Meanwhile, the US government, citing Iran's "extraordinary humanitarian needs," on Wednesday temporarily suspended restrictions on money and equipment meant to help the Islamic republic recover from the quake.
"The Iranian people deserve and need the assistance of the international community to help them recover," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said in a statement.
"The American people want to help," he said.
The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general license temporarily en-abling US citizens and NGOs to send money to aid activities in and around the stricken city of Bam.
Donations of items like food, certain medicines, clothing and tents do not require a license, Duffy said in a statement in Crawford, Texas while US President George W. Bush ushered in the new year at his nearby ranch.
The US State Department said it was issuing additional licenses allowing the US government and NGOs in the US to export to Iran sensitive items like transportation equipment, satellite telephones and radio and personal computing items.
"After [consulting] Congress, the Secretary of State determined that, due to the extraordinary humanitarian needs created by the earthquake, it is in the national interest of the United States," to allow such exports, the State Department's No. 2 spokesman, Adam Ereli, said in a statement.
The general license, valid for three months from last Saturday, allows US citizens to make direct contributions of US dollars to Iranian and other organizations for such relief.
The move, the latest in a series of US outreach efforts to its longtime foe in the earthquake's aftermath, waives requirements that individual licenses be granted for such payments, which are usually illegal without federal approval.
Applying for those permits can be an onerous process, with lengthy waits for approval. Violations are punishable by hefty fines.
The general license announced on Wednesday streamlines that process and makes it easier for US citizens, aid groups and others to contribute to Bam relief efforts.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who this week hinted that new dialogue between the US and Iran could emerge from the ruins of the earthquake, actively campaigned for the suspension of the sanctions which have been in place since the 1980s, US officials said.
"There are things happening, and therefore we should keep open the possibility of dialogue at an appropriate point in the future," Powell said in an interview with the Washington Post published on Tuesday.
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