AVAJ (Iran), June 24: Survivors of a powerful earthquake in northern Iran hurled stones at a minister’s convoy, saying rescue teams came too late to save scores of villagers buried alive in the rubble.

Thousands of Iranians spent a second night outdoors in near-freezing temperatures on Monday after entire villages were demolished, pulverised to dust.

Measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, the quake struck early on Saturday killing at least 222 people, most of them women, children and the elderly while men were working in the fields and vineyards.

The Red Crescent revised the death toll down from an earlier estimate of 500 people, saying some of the injured had been mistakenly counted among the dead.

But residents in the mountainous province of Qazvin, epicentre of the earthquake, said they believed the death toll was much higher. Qazvin’s governor said his office had already issued 500 burial permits.

Angry survivors in Avaj, a town of 3,600 people which suffered the heaviest casualties, pelted Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari’s convoy with stones, accusing authorities of failing to respond in time to save victims trapped in the wreckage of their homes.

“My child died and the local people helped me to bring him out of the rubble. Only local people are helping,” said one man in Avaj, some 200kms west of Tehran.

The town’s residents complained no tents had yet been set up and they were still waiting for food and medicine.

Hungry and cold, they gathered in open spaces as night fell and after at least 12 aftershocks rocked the region, rousing panic and inflicting more damage to creaking buildings.

Emergency services were struggling to treat at least 1,500 injured people and spraying disinfectant to try to halt the spread of disease in soaring daytime temperatures. Some 5,000 homes were destroyed, leaving 25,000 people homeless.

“I lost my two sons, my wife. I have no home,” wailed an elderly man in the nearby village of Changoureh, beating his cane against the ground as he stumbled through the streets.

OFFER OF AID: US President George W. Bush extended an offer of humanitarian aid to Iran, reaching out to a country he has branded part of an “axis of evil”.