They were largely unaware of a surprise New Year gift with Washington's announcement that it was suspending its sanctions on Iran to enable cash, relief supplies and equipment to reach them from the United States.

Meanwhile authorities and foreign experts were revising downwards the death toll from last Friday's quake, which some officials had predicted would reach

President Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday estimated the number of dead at 40,000, while a local official said late Wednesday that some 26,500 had been buried in Bam and the surrounding villages.

United Nations disaster assessment coordination team leader Jesper Lund confirmed an earlier figure of 28,000 burials, adding that some 5-6,000 could have been interred privately by their families.

He did not expect this total to rise much further.

The interior ministry for its part said a number of others would have died in hospitals elsewhere in Iran where they had been evacuated.

Lund put the number of injured at 30,000, of whom 13,000 had been evacuated.

Iranian state media said a further 11 people had been pulled alive from the ruins on Wednesday, confounding experts' expectations that survivors would still be clinging to life so many days after the quake.

State radio also reported that Bam had on Wednesday seen its first wedding since the earthquake. It said the ceremony had been scheduled for the day the quake hit, and the groom's father had insisted it go ahead as that was what the friends and relatives who died in the disaster would have wanted.

The United States cited Iran's "extraordinary humanitarian needs" to justify its decision to suspend for 90 days its restrictions on sending cash and equipment to the Islamic republic.

"The Iranian people deserve and need the assistance of the international community to help them recover," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said in a statement. "The American people want to help."

The US Treasury issued a general license temporarily enabling US citizens and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to to make direct contributions of dollars to Iranian and other organizations for relief work in and around Bam.

The US State Department said it was allowing the US government and US NGOs to export to Iran sensitive items like transportation equipment, satellite telephones, and radio and personal computing items.

"After consultation with Congress, the Secretary of State determined that, due to the extraordinary humanitarian needs created by the earthquake, it is in the national interest of the United States" to allow such exports, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who this week hinted that new dialogue between the United States and Iran could emerge from the ruins of the earthquake, actively campaigned for the suspension of the sanctions which have been in place since the 1980s, US officials said.

"There are things happening, and therefore we should keep open the possibility of dialogue at an appropriate point in the future," Powell said in an interview with the Washington Post published Tuesday.

He referred to Iran's decision in December to submit to reinforced international inspections of its nuclear energy facilities, which Washington alleges are covers for a secret weapons program.

Thus far Iranian officials have, in public at least, snubbed the US overture, with Khatami and the foreign ministry signalling that Tehran's aversion of what it brands the "Great Satan" remains intact.

But over the weekend, the United States offered -- and Iran accepted -- US humanitarian assistance to the victims of the December 26 Bam earthquake, which is believed to have taken some 40,000 lives.

An 80-strong US team is among more than 1,500 rescue and relief workers from some 30 countries who have arrived in Bam, according to Lund.

Some teams have already started pulling out, however, expressing frustration at having found only bodies under the debris of the flimsy houses built mainly of mud brick.

But Amar Ben Abdesselam, a doctor from the Algerian civil protection unit, acknowledged that even the recovery of bodies helped families come to terms with their grief. "They thanked us for doing it," he said.

With the end of the mourning period, Shiites are encouraged to look to the future. But although the authorities have pledged to rebuild Bam, including its ancient citadel which was a major tourist attraction, that future still looked bleak.

TERRA.WIRE