The 97-year-old woman rescued on Saturday after nine days in the rubble of Iran's earthquake probably survived because she was wrapped up in bed and had just ate breakfast when the quake struck, officials said yesterday.
Bam resident Sharbanou Mazandarani told an Associated Press photographer who visited the field hospital where she is being treated that she was hungry: "For the Imam's sake, please give me some food."
The death toll from the quake has risen to about 35,000, Brigadier General Hoseyn Fat'ahi of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps told Iran's official news agency. He said the injured numbered 17,000. Figures for the dead have varied according to differing estimates of the number of bodies still under the rubble and thousands of unregistered burials.
Mr Denis McClean of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies said a medical team from the federation interviewed the woman yesterday. "After a good night's rest and a light breakfast, she told doctors that she had been trapped in her bed but had access to some food and drink which had been served to her by her family in the early morning prior to the earthquake on December 26," he reported on the Red Cross website www.ifrc.org.
Mazandarani was discovered by rescue workers on Saturday, her bed protected in an air pocket between two fallen walls.
She was in "remarkably good shape" today, said Dr Paul Odberg, medical coordinator for the IFRC operation in this ruined ancient city. After the woman was rescued she asked for a cup of tea, then complained it was too hot to drink.
The woman told Odberg she spent her time "reciting verses from the Koran, praying to God and thanking Allah for being alive."
Her immediate family, two children and two grandchildren, died in the quake.
The Red Crescent is now trying to trace her extended family.
It is unusual for people to survive being buried in quake rubble for more than three days, but Odberg said Mazandarani's story sounded believable.
Odberg said it was possible the low metabolism customary among old people could have helped her endure with minimal sustenance for so long.