SOURCE: As­so­ci­at­ed Press

DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP) — The death toll in a cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of a tow­er in south­west­ern Iran rose to 37 on Wednes­day, of­fi­cials said, as emer­gency work­ers pulled an­oth­er body from the rub­ble over a week af­ter the dis­as­ter that has prompt­ed an out­pour­ing of out­rage and grief in the coun­try.

Res­cuers con­tin­ued sift­ing through the ru­ins of the Metropol Build­ing in Abadan, some 660 kilo­me­ters (410 miles) south­west of the cap­i­tal, Tehran. The gov­er­nor of the Khuzes­tan province, Sadegh Khalil­ian, told state TV that he ex­pects res­cuers to find more bod­ies, based on the num­ber of fam­i­lies still wait­ing in lim­bo for word from their loved ones. It’s un­clear how many peo­ple re­main un­ac­count­ed for.

The struc­tur­al build­ing fail­ure in the oil-rich but im­pov­er­ished Khuzes­tan province has fo­cused pub­lic at­ten­tion on shod­dy con­struc­tion prac­tices and prompt­ed al­le­ga­tions of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion and neg­li­gence.

Of­fi­cials plan to de­mol­ish the half of the Metropol Build­ing that has re­mained stand­ing, Khalil­ian added, and al­ready have evac­u­at­ed and re­housed near­by res­i­dents. He said he ex­pects the search ef­fort to fin­ish by late Thurs­day.

Footage wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on­line in re­cent days has shown an­gry crowds gath­er­ing in mourn­ing and protest at the col­lapse site, chant­i­ng slo­gans against top of­fi­cials. Re­port­ing on events in Abadan re­mains ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult as au­thor­i­ties have dis­rupt­ed in­ter­net ac­cess, ac­cord­ing to ex­perts, re­strict­ing peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to share videos and in­for­ma­tion.

For­eign-based Far­si-lan­guage tele­vi­sion chan­nels have de­scribed tear gas and oth­er shots be­ing fired as se­cu­ri­ty forces dis­persed demon­stra­tions. The num­ber of ca­su­al­ties and ar­rests re­mains un­clear.

The dis­as­ter has pro­voked sym­pa­thy across the coun­try, with scores of Ira­ni­ans still tweet­ing the Far­si-lan­guage hash­tag “#Abadan is not alone” 10 days af­ter the col­lapse.

Mean­while ten­sions con­tin­ue to sim­mer in the wider Mid­dle East af­ter Iran’s para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard last week seized two Greek oil tankers at sea. Satel­lite im­ages an­a­lyzed by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Wednes­day con­firmed that one of the two Greek oil tankers seized by Iran’s para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard re­mains off the coast of the port city of Ban­dar Ab­bas.

The Plan­et Labs PBC im­ages from Tues­day showed the Pru­dent War­rior be­tween Ban­dar Ab­bas and Iran’s Qeshm Is­land near the strate­gic Strait of Hor­muz, the nar­row mouth of the Per­sian Gulf through which a fifth of all the world’s oil trad­ed pass­es. The lo­ca­tion of the ves­sel al­so matched an ear­li­er po­si­tion of­fered by a satel­lite track­er briefly switched on by the ship’s crew.