New Zealand’s prime minister has said at least 65 people have been killed in the earthquake that hit the city of Christchurch.

New Zealand’s powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted railway lines around Christchurch ripped a new 11ft wide fault line in the earth’s surface, a geologist said today.

Chimneys and walls crumbled to the ground, roads cracked in half and residents were knocked off their feet as a powerful magnitude-7.1 earthquake rocked New Zealand’s South Island early today.