Up to 500 feared dead in Algerian quake

Up to 500 people are now feared dead after a strong earthquake hit Algeria. There are reports that 1,672 people were injured in the quake.

Algerian radio said that most of the deaths occurred near the epicentre, located near Phenia, about 40 miles east of the capital Algiers and that 15 people were killed in Algiers.

According to the radio, 104 people were killed in the town of Rouiba, 20 miles east of Algiers. Some 50 died in Boumerdes, about six miles from the epicentre and 42 were killed in the town of Ain Taya, about 19 miles from the capital.

Two more deaths were counted in the Berber capital of Tizi Ouzou, and one more in Bouira, both further east, the radio said.

“I saw the earth tremble. I saw people jump from the window of the hotel,” a resident of Boumerdes, identified as Icham Mouiss, told French television station LCI.

Interior minister Nouredine Yazid Zerhouni travelled to Phenia and Boumerdes. A call for blood donors was issued and medical personnel were asked to pitch in and help.

A hospital in the town of Baghlia was seriously damaged by the quake and numerous roofs in towns around the epicentre caved in, the interior ministry said.

In Algiers, cracks appeared in a number of buildings. LCI air footage of a stairwell in one building that had crumbled to the ground. People thronged the streets, afraid to enter their buildings.

Butch Kinerney, spokesman for the US Geological Survey, called it a shallow earthquake that was capable of causing ”significant damage and injuries”.

He said that in 1980, hundreds of people were killed in a 7.7-magnitude quake in the same region.

“This is the largest since then,” Kinerney said.

Further information was not immediately available.

The quake hit at about 7.45pm (9.45pm Irish time), cutting electricity in some neighbourhoods of Algiers and causing panic throughout the city. It was followed by at least three aftershocks.

Algerian officials gave the preliminary magnitude as 5.4, but the US Geological Survey in Washington put it at 6.7.