President Rafael Correa is raising taxes and imposing a one-off levy on millionaires to rebuild cities devastated by Ecuador's worst earthquake in decades.

Aid began to flow to areas devastated by Ecuador's strongest earthquake in decades and the death toll continued to rise as rescue teams desperately searched rubble for survivors.

The strongest earthquake to hit Ecuador in decades has flattened buildings and buckled highways along its Pacific coast.

ECUADOR was under a state of siege yesterday, the streets quiet with the military in charge of public order, after soldiers rescued President Rafael Correa from a hospital where he’d been surrounded by police who roughed him up and tear-gassed him earlier.

An army plane slammed into an apartment building in an upmarket neighbourhood of Ecuador's mountainous capital, killing five people aboard the aircraft and two more on the ground.