‘You can smell the victims’

RESCUE workers scrabbled at mounds of rubble yesterday to find survivors of an earthquake in the Algerian capital and nearby towns that killed more than 1,000 people and injured more than 6,000.

Measuring 6.7 on the open-ended Richter scale, the quake sent terrified residents running into the streets on Wednesday night in Algiers and towns to the east, along the populous Mediterranean coastal strip. The tremor, felt as far away as Spain, was Algeria’s worst in more than 20 years.

Some 24 hours after the quake struck, Algerian state radio quoted Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni as last night saying the death now stood at 1,092 and 6,782 people had been injured.