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Nairy, a builder from Leninakan, Armenia, said he had been trapped in Karabakh since December by the blockade.

With hope fading that any survivors remained buried in the rubble, many of the doctors, rescue squads, fire fighters and dog handlers who had converged on the ravaged cities of Leninakan and Spitak from around the globe began to head home last week.

Arriving in Moscow on Friday morning, he flew on to Leninakan on Saturday, which had been declared a day of national mourning.

At Elementary School No. 9 on Leninakan's Gorky Street, "the earthquake killed children on the spot during their classes," said a correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, the Communist youth newspaper.

A bespectacled economist who told of digging out one lone survivor from among 48 corpses in a Leninakan classroom.