DAHUYEH, Feb 22: Stumbling through rubble, their faces stained with tears, women who survived Tuesday's earthquake in Iran looked to the heavens in anguish as freezing rain lashed their flattened mountain village.

Beside them, stricken men clawed at the rubble desperately overturning brick by brick to search for survivors among the ruins of one of the worst affected villages in south eastern Iran.

Only the green dome of the Sultan Seyed Ibrahim mausoleum - the largest building in the mud-brick village of Dahuyeh - was left standing as dozens of volunteers desperately began an almost futile rescue operation.

Harrowing shrieks of anguish pierced the quiet as survivors recognised loved ones among the bodies pulled out of the rubble. But it was silence that reigned in the hours after the village of just under 1,000 farm labourers and their families, clinging to the foothills of the mountains, was pummelled in the dawn temblor.

Those who escaped when their simple mud-brick homes collapsed sat among the debris, ankle deep in mud and wrapped in blankets handed out by soldiers and volunteers. According to the Red Crescent, 40 villages were affected by the earthquake and half of them Dahuyeh included - were completely destroyed.

With the rescue operation hampered by blocked roads and rains in the area expected to last until Thursday, the Red Crescent launched an immediate appeal for clothes, blankets, food and water supplies. -AFP