1,000 dead in quake and toll to keep rising

At least 1,000 people have been killed in the most powerful earthquake to strike the Indian subcontinent in more than half a century.

The quake in the western Gujarat state shook high-rise buildings far away in the capital, New Delhi, and was felt in Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Federal Home Minister Lal K Advani said the death figure "could be 1,000 or more" in Gujarat state.

In Ahmedabad, Gujarat's commercial capital and a city of 4.5 million, as many as 50 multi-storey buildings collapsed and at least 260 people were killed.

Corpses were piled up on the verandah of the NS hospital, while patients overflowing into the hallways wailed and screamed with broken limbs and bleeding wounds.

The epicentre was near Bhuj, a desert town of 150,000 people in Gujarat where authorities said 200 people were killed and 90% of the houses damaged.

In Ahmedabad about 70 children and some teachers were feared dead in the debris of their school building, while 19 engineering students were believed trapped in a collapsed college elsewhere in the city.

In the desert state of Rajasthan, the eighth century Jaisalmer Fort, a popular tourist attraction, was damaged.