Scores of quake victims buried in mass graves

Many of the 400 victims of El Salvador's earthquake have been buried in mass graves.

Authorities say the disaster has wiped out entire families, making it impossible to identify all the dead.

About 1,000 people are still unaccounted for.

As some rescuers gave up hope of finding anyone else alive, a survivor was brought up from beneath tons of rubble. Workers rescued 22-year-old Sergio Moreno, who was trapped for 30 hours under slabs of concrete. He had drawn rescuers' attention by tapping on the concrete.

The mass burials come as the President of El Salvador asks Colombia for coffins for the victims of Saturday's quake.

President Fransisco Flores' request has been made as offers of aid and help came in from across the world.

Coroner Mario Alfredo Hernandez says with no refrigeration facilities and bodies piling up in Las Colinas - the scene of a landslide triggered by the quake - there has been little choice but to hold mass burials.

About half of the corpses have been unidentified.

With aftershocks as strong as 5.4 magnitude rattling the unstable mass of soil and rubble, there is no safe place to keep the 182 bodies found so far.

Red Cross official Mildred Sandoval says 403 deaths had been confirmed nationwide. Some 2,000 others have been injured, 4,692 houses destroyed and 16,148 damaged.

Saturday's earthquake off El Salvador's coast was felt from northern Panama to central Mexico - a distance of more than 1,100 miles. The aftershocks centred within a few miles of the capital.