TEHRAN, Dec 26: More than 20,000 people were killed in an earthquake in the southeastern Iranian city of Bam on Friday, government officials said.

“Rescue workers have found more bodies. The figure is now more than 20,000,” one of the government officials said.

The officials added that the number of injured exceeded 50,000.

The governor of Kerman province, where Bam is located, said: “One thing is sure: the historic quarter of Bam has been completely destroyed and many of our countrymen are underneath the ruins. The situation is very worrying.”

More than 90 per cent of the old city, one of the wonders of Iran’s cultural heritage, was destroyed. Besides the flattened homes, a 2,000-year-old citadel, once the largest mud-brick structure in the world, was gone forever.

The quake hit at 5:28am (6.58am PST), some 1,000 kilometres southeast of Tehran, with a magnitude of 6.3 degrees on the Richter scale.

Several aftershocks were recorded, the most violent occurring at 6.36am (8.06am PST), IRNA said.

The Strasbourg Observatory in France put the quake at 6.6 and said the temblor was the most powerful in the region since 1998.

The US Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center in Virginia measured it at 6.7.

Telephone and radio communications with the city, as well as the towns of Giroft and Kohnuj, were cut off following the quake.

The government set up a crisis centre, dispatching five helicopters and two huge C-130 transport planes to the quake site.

Authorities urged the population not to leave the disaster zone unless seeking urgent medical assistance.

The tremor, which struck before dawn as most of the city’s 200,000 residents were asleep, was met with a swift response from the international community pledging immediate and long-term aid.

Dozens of bodies littered the streets of the city, built almost entirely of mud brick and ill-equipped to withstand a big temblor.

Bereaved residents wandered the streets pleading for the authorities to speed up rescue efforts.