EXHAUSTED volunteers from Okehampton-based rescue charity Rapid-UK have returned home after failing to find any survivors in Iran in the aftermath of last Friday?s devastating earthquake.

The 20 strong team of volunteers from Rapid-UK were the first international rescue group to arrive in the historic city of Bam to aid in the search for survivors amid the rubble.

Cerian Henshaw, spokeswoman for Rapid-UK, said the rescuers had reached the stage where they felt ?as much that can be done has been done? and so the decision was taken on Monday night to leave Iran.

Attention has now switched to allowing aid workers access to provide humanitarian relief and to ensuring the swift burial of bodies to prevent the possible spread of disease.

Mrs Henshaw said: ?It has been very much an intense non-stop search since the team arrived at 4.30am on Saturday.

?Rapid were the first UK team in Bam and we were the only team there for about 24 hours.? She said because the team had demonstrated its expertise at other disaster relief missions, they were asked to co-ordinate rescue operations with a number of other European rescue teams as they arrived.

So although the Rapid-UK contingent numbered around 20, they were section leaders for a further 100 personnel, including rescue teams from Spain, Russia, Germany and Austria.

She said the rescue team was given a 5km area in the northern part of the city ? one of the worst hit areas ? to search thoroughly for survivors amid the rubble, but found only bodies.

The team worked with specially trained Rapid-UK rescue dogs Morse and Molly plus another seven dogs from other international rescue groups.

?The dogs have been a crucial part of the rescue mission. The bricks have turned to powder and the timespan for people surviving is quite short so the dogs have speeded up the process and it gave everyone the best possible chance of survival,? she said.

Upon their return to the UK, the dogs will have to be taken straight into quarantine in Manchester for six months.

Mrs Henshaw said the team were ?very tired? but felt even though they had not been able to save any lives, they had been able to help the devastated people of Iran, who had seen every possible effort had been made to find survivors.

John Holland, operations director for Rapid-UK, said the team had arrived to find time, weather conditions and the type of buildings were all against them, which had given them only a ?small window of opportunity? to find people who were still alive.

Mr Holland said on arriving in the city the team had been able to survey the area in a helicopter.

?I could not really see a building left untouched. Many of the buildings were just piles of rubble,? he said.

The Rapid-UK team used specialist sound location and heat-seeking equipment and tracker dogs to search the rubble but it was to no avail.

As many as 28,000 people are feared to have died in the quake which struck early on Boxing Day.

An estimated 80 percent of Bam was flattened by the earthquake which registered 6.3 on the Richter scale.