1000 DIE IN FLOOD

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27435, 23 August 1954, Page 11

1000 DIE IN FLOOD

Pilgrims Trapped In Shrine (Rec. 11 p.m.) TEHERAN, August 22. More than 1000 bodies of pilgrims have been found at the Moslem shrine St Imam ’ Zadeh Davoud ■■ at Farahzad, ) miles north-east of Teheran, where a disastrous flood occurred last Tuesday, welfare officials announced in Teheran last night. First reports of the disaster reaching Teheran today said the subsiding floodwaters revealed the bodies of men, women and children mangled and heaped on each other inside the highwalled shrine of the Imam. Farazhad village was thronged With pilgrims on Tuesday—the holy day of Aid Ghadir. Many old. sick and lame were among them because the shrine is supposed to have miraculous healing properties. When news of the floods arrived, devout Moslems cried: “Let us flee into the Imam’s shrine. He will save us.” Some of thode who fled instead to the nearny hills were among the few survivors. Typhoid has broken- out in the stricken area and medical teams have thrown a cordon around an area of 50 square miles. Contaminated water is being diverted from the towns and villages. A mass burial of the victims—most of them from Teheran—is to be held on the site of the disaster, which the authorities say, wiped out whole families. . ; Floods have been causing havoc : in Persia since last month.. More than 1000 persons were left homeless when floodwaters swept through- villages 25 miles from Teheran in mid-July. At the end of-July 200 persons were killed in the worst floods for half a century at Ghazvin, about 60 miles north-west of Teheran. The damage then was estimated at more than £1,000,000.