"Since this morning we have had 60 Iranian planes and 13 foreign cargo planes, including one Italian, one Ukrainian and one each from Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, France and Azerbaijan," says Mohammad Mohebi, who heads operations on the single landing strip.

UN jets, Iranian military helicopters and Hercules C-130 transporters land one after the other, while international aid workers battle to unload their cargo, however bad the chaos and questionable the coordination.

"We expected to be deployed somehere," they say with a resigned air.

"For the earthquake in Algeria, vans waited for us to empty the plane," says one French firefighter.

Irritation bubbles below the surface.

"UN officials told us it was too late to use our sniffer dogs. I told them that even if we save only one person, we have to go. There is still a chance. Besides the Red Cross people asked for our help," says Ove Syslak, in charge of a team of 29 Norwegian rescuers.

For those who arrived at 1 am Sunday morning (2130 GMT Saturday) at Kerman airport 200 kilometres (125 miles) away, it was a 10-hour wait for their onward journey. They were bitter about the wasted time.

But Bam airport is at breaking point. Planes take off as soon as their cargo is unloaded. There is no space to hang around.

With everything cloaked in enormous dust clouds, police try to contain the crowd as vans rush around. Finding someone in charge is not easy.

Itself damaged in the quake, the main building looks nothing like an airport.

The baggage reclaim belt strains under a mountain of medicine, which volunteers from the Iranian Red Crescent dish out almost at random.

Although most of the injured are evacuated to other towns, or ferried to an outside tent, the concourse has been transformed into a hospital.

Empty stretchers and intravenous drips are dumped next to a portrait of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic republic.

The metal rafters in the ceilings have collapsed on the ground, windows are smashed and everything covered in debris. Amazingly the electricity works. Two television sets blare out fuzzy pictures because the antenna has been dislodged.

Then in the middle of the day people are told that Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is about to arrive.

Dozens of police officers wearing white gaiters line up on the tarmac. But it turns out he is coming Monday. And, so it continues, as aid jostles for space with the injured.

TERRA.WIRE