Rescue workers dug through the rubble of dozens of collapsed buildings in northern Algeria yesterday after an earthquake reportedly killed more than 1 000 people.
Impromptu street morgues were set up as hospitals in the capital, Algiers, and the neighbouring town of Boumerdes, about 50 kilometres to the east, struggled to cope with the injured.
The 6,7-magnitude quake reduced blocks of flats to rubble, knocked down walls and uprooted trees in Algiers and in towns and cities east along the country’s densely populated Mediterranean coastal strip.
Survivors walked through the debris searching for relatives, or sifted through the remains of their homes. Algerian television showed dozens of bodies lined up under sheets and blankets, some clearly children.
”Buildings have collapsed. Entire families are underneath,” said the prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, as the interior ministry reported a toll of more than 1 000 dead and 6 700 injured.
Television pictures showed helmeted rescue workers digging through the wreckage of tower blocks and houses in a search for survivors.
Icham Mouiss, from Boumerdes, said: ”I saw the earth tremble. I saw people jump from the window of the hotel.”
The death toll was highest in towns close to the epicentre such as Thenia, about 65 kilometres east of Algiers.
The quake shook Algerians as they ate supper on Wednesday night, cutting electricity in some neighbourhoods of Algiers and causing panic throughout the city. About 10 aftershocks rippled through the area in the hours that followed.
”I have never seen such a disaster in my life. Everything has collapsed,” said Yazid Khelfaoui, whose mother was killed in the Rouiba neighbourhood of eastern Algiers. The rubble of his block of flats was all around him. At Algiers’ Mustapha hospital, police forced back a growing crowd of people searching for loved ones.
”I want to see my brother. I want to know if he is dead or still alive. Please let me inside,” said Ahmed (40) who had come from Rouiba.
The interior ministry said at least 60 buildings were destroyed, a hospital in the town of Baghlia was seriously damaged, and numerous roofs in towns around Thenia caved in.
It was the most devastating disaster to hit Algeria since a double quake west of the capital killed 2 500 people and demolished 70% of the town of El Asnam in October 1980.
Algerians are no strangers to death and destruction. The country is just emerging from a decade of slaughter involving guerrillas, security forces and civilians which has killed between 100 000 and 150 000 people.
”If it’s not terrorism, it’s floods, if it’s not floods, it’s earthquakes,” said Mohammed Khalfallah, a 29-year-old driver.
Algiers itself was last struck by a natural disaster in November 2001, when flash floods killed about 760 people, mostly in the poor neighbourhood of Bab el Oued.
In 1994, about 150 000 people were made homeless by a tremor in north-western Algeria that killed more than 170 people.
The country’s Training Centre for the National Sporting Elite, a complex where the country’s sporting hopefuls lived and trained, was among the buildings destroyed yesterday.
A Romanian gymnastics coach, a national swimming coach and an international weightlifter died along with the centre’s cook, and at least a dozen people were injured there.
Other athletes and passers-by stood in shock as cranes pulled away huge chunks of rubble.
Several European countries, including France, Germany and Spain, yesterday sent rescue teams with sniffer dogs to help Algeria deal with the aftermath of the disaster.
The quake also caused some panic in parts of Spain’s Balearic islands, driving people out into the streets and causing some flooding.
Emergency services on the islands of Majorca, Ibiza and Minorca received more than 1 000 calls from people worried about the tremors and freak waves caused by the quake.
Sudden surge-tides sank some 30 yachts and motorboats in the port of Mahon in Minorca and others elsewhere around the islands. The Spanish authorities said a total of 150 vessels had been damaged. – Guardian Unlimited Â