Tears and chaos amid rubble

Shocked residents in the Algerian city of Rouiba hunted frantically for loved ones through the night yesterday amid the rubble of an earthquake that devastated their homes.

Families, many of them crying, thronged the streets of the town east of the capital Algiers where more than 1,000 were confirmed dead and nearly 7,000 injured.

"It is catastrophic. I have never seen such a disaster in my life. Everything has collapsed," Yazid Khelfaoui, who lost his mother in the quake, told Reuters in Rouiba, rubble all around him. The apartment building he lived in had collapsed.

Rouiba, a relatively prosperous, modern community some 30 kilometres east of Algiers' eastern outskirts, was close to the epicentre of the quake and one of the hardest-hit areas.

"Buildings, apartment blocks, have collapsed like a house of cards," said a Reuters correspondent at the scene. "Buildings, one after the other, have collapsed. It's devastation here."

Rubble was everywhere and rows of bodies shrouded in sheets were piled up near the hospital, Algerian TV footage showed.

Women huddled with their children in the streets, afraid to go home for fear of aftershocks or worried about facing the cold without shelter.

Electricity was out in much of the city, hampering rescue efforts before dawn. Young and old worked to find survivors in the debris, after the authorities called on residents to help.

At the remains of a three-storey apartment block in Rouiba, which collapsed into a pile of rubble when the earthquake hit, civil defence officials and families tried to locate more than 10 people believed buried in the debris.

"Most of my family was away too but my mother wasn't, she was taken to hospital," 30-year-old Amin Loukia told Reuters as he scrabbled through the rubble. "But I lost my neighbour Djelloul. I hope I still find three of my neighbours alive."

Communication lines, including mobile phones, were working only erratically, and were jammed by families trying to find out if there loved ones were still alive.

Ambulances in Rouiba and nearby towns collected the injured, some driving to Algiers as local hospitals reached capacity. State radio appealed for blood donors.

A school collapsed in Thenia, the nearest big town to the quake's epicentre where dozens died. Four families were believed buried under the school, a reporter at the scene told Reuters. Bulldozers were clearing the way and the army was called in.