Algerian quake claims 500 lives

More than 500 people have died and around 4,600 were injured in the massive Algerian earthquake that shook the area near the capital.

Rescuers feared families were buried in the rubble as blocks of flats collapsed, trees crushed cars and weeping survivors walked amid debris.

“This is a misfortune that has struck the Algerian people,” Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said on television.

The interior ministry told the official Algerian news agency APS the death toll of 538 could rise as rescuers found more people buried in rubble. It said 4,637 people were injured.

The quake was deadliest in towns near Thenia, close to the quake’s epicentre. Thenia is about 40 miles east of Algiers, the capital.

The prime minister said he feared entire families may be buried under collapsed homes and the initial death toll might, therefore, be ”unfortunately partial”.

The quake hit at about 7.45pm (9.45pm Irish time) yesterday, cutting electricity in some neighbourhoods of Algiers and causing panic throughout the city. About 10 aftershocks rippled through the area in the hours that followed.

The US Geological Survey, which monitors quakes around the world, said the temblor had a preliminary magnitude of 6.7. Algerian officials put it much lower at 5.2. The cause of the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

The hardest-hit towns were near the epicentre, east of the capital: Rouiba, Boumerdes and Ain Taya.

Numerous towns throughout the Boumerdes district were devastated by the quake, and residents were swarming to area hospitals with injuries, or to seek news of loved ones.

In Algiers, several building collapsed, reducing homes to piles of rubble mixed with kitchen utilities, clothing or a bicycle.

People thronged the streets, preferring to be outdoors for fear of another temblor.

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

Interior Minister Nouredine Yazid Zerhouni travelled to Thenia and Boumerdes. A call for blood donors was issued and medical personnel and employees of Sonelgaz, the state company that supplies electricity, 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 showed footage of a stairwell in one building that had crumbled to the ground. People thronged the streets, afraid to enter their buildings. Some schools were opened to take in people whose homes were unsafe.

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.

The earthquake was the latest tragedy to visit the North African nation where an Islamic uprising that has killed 120,000 people dead has raged for more than a decade.

In November 2001, more than 700 people were killed in flooding around the capital, with most of the deaths in Bab el-Oued.