After days of clearing away rubble and frantic searching for bodies among the ruins, the rhythm of life was slowly returning to normal after the tragedy.

Only 24 hours earlier, the streets were still clogged with hundreds of lorries and pick-up trucks heading out of the city, piled high with the flotsam of wrecked homes, while people from outlying areas continued to flow in looking for emergency assistance.

A week on from the disaster which saw the ancient mud-brick citadel and walled city of Bam flattened by the quake that seismologists have put as high as 6.7 on the Richter scale, estimates of the death toll were still unclear, with 30,000 seen as the most probable.

Some 40,000 homeless survivors are still sleeping rough in tents set up amid the rubble.

The Iranian Red Crescent had begun bringing in 250 beds to the hospital to accommodate patients transferred from field hospitals in the surrounding area, opened by foreign aid organisations.

Fifty beds were already in place, UN official Jesper Lund said.

"The foreign-operated field hospitals are starting to be dismantled. The Hungarians are leaving today, the Belgians are going tomorrow. In a month, they will all have left."

The remaining inhabitants of Bam will be moved into tent cities to ease the task of aid workers and also to ensure that health and hygiene can be closely monitored.

The authorities are also intending, with the help of UNICEF, the United Nations children's body, to reopen schools next week in prefabricated classrooms.

And bank workers were taking delivery of cash recovered from the ruins, while police, themselves working from 35 temporary offices set up in tents, were deployed in front of shops to prevent looting.

Meanwhile, a plane chartered by a Spanish regional authorities and carrying Red Cross aid is due to arrive here in the early hours of Saturday, officials said.

The aircraft left Madrid Friday evening with a cargo of aid worth around 220,000 euros (277,000 dollars), officials from the Spanish region of Extremadura said.

But even as aid continues to arrive from all quarters, money is desperately needed, and the UN is preparing to launch an appeal for funds to see the city through the difficult three months ahead, UN official Frederick Lyons said.

Meanwhile, hopes of a thaw in diplomatic relations with the United States in the light of American aid were dashed by President George W. Bush in a speech in Texas.

Bush said he had temporarily eased restrictions on sending money and sensitive equipment to Iran "to be able to get humanitarian aid into the country," not to send a signal to Tehran.

And he made clear that, if Tehran wants better relations, it must turn over any followers of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden it has in custody, abandon its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons and embrace political reform.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has stressed that any US humanitarian help, while welcome, was not indicative of warming diplomatic relations between the two nations.

And Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, hailed the easing of sanctions as "positive" but said that only their total lifting would create a new climate between Tehran and Washington.

A US official said Friday Washington had proposed sending a delegation headed by Senator Elizabeth Dole and a member of Bush's family to Iran on a humanitarian mission, but a State Department spokesman said Iran had, for the moment, rejected the proposal.

"We have heard back from the Iranians, that given the current situation in Bam and all that is going on there now, it would be preferable to hold such a visit in abeyance," said Adam Ereli.

"Therefore we are not pursuing this further at the moment."

He added that any talk of a future mission once the situation in Bam had eased would be "speculation."

Such a mission would be the first public official US visit to Iran since the 1979-81 period, when the American embassy was seized by radical students and 52 staff were held hostage for 444 days. The crisis led to Washington breaking off diplomatic relations and imposing sanctions.

Voices were raised against the Americans at the main weekly Muslim prayers here Friday, despite the aid they have sent to Bam.

In a passionate sermon at the first Friday prayers since the earthquake, the imam leading the service in Bam called for an end to US and Israeli oppression.

Asghar Asqari said: "I hope the day will come when we will cut off the hands of the American and Israeli oppressors, those warmongering forces who occupy Iraq and Palestine, and replace them with hands which reach out to offer aid, friendship and humanity." he said.

And in Tehran outspoken hardliner Ayatollah Ahmad Janati said US aid would not wipe the slate clean for the "evil"' Bush.

Elsewhere, though, the religious focus was one of remembrance, with Muslim worshippers in Jordan and in Bosnia holding special prayers for the victims of the earthquake.

TERRA.WIRE