The earthquake which devastated the southeast Iranian city of Bam on December 26 killed 26,271 people, according to a new and dramatically lower death toll announced Monday by the Islamic republic's official statistics centre.The previous official toll from the quake, announced by Bam governor Ali Shafii in February, had stood at 43,000 dead, a rise on the January figure of 41,000 announced by the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"The final and definite number of people dead from the Bam earthquake stands at 26,271," the head of Iran's statistics centre, Abbas Ali Zali, was quoted as saying by state-run television and radio.
He said the toll covered the historic city of Bam as well as its surrounding areas and districts, where a total of 142,376 people were living.
According to the official, 525 people were still missing.
"Regarding the huge difference of the death toll given at the time of the earthquake and the figure we are now giving, this is mainly due to the double counting of bodies and the chaos caused by the disaster," Zali was quoted as saying.
He also pointed to initial reports, that later proved false, that some 400 female students were killed in the collapse there of a university dormitory.
The city of Bam, which had a population of some 100,000 people, was almost totally destroyed by the massive quake on December 26. Tens of thousands of people were injured and left homeless.
Bam's ancient mud-brick citadel, whose origins date back more than 2,000 years and is a world cultural heritage site, was also virtually destroyed.
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