Peru earthquake death toll rises to 450

The death toll in the earthquake that struck Peru’s southern desert has risen to 450 with about 1,500 injured, a senior UN official said today, quoting figures from the National Disaster Management Authority in Peru.

Assistant Secretary-General Margareta Wahlstrom, the deputy emergency relief co-ordinator, said “so far (there are) 450 deaths counted, and injured about 1,500.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is in contact with the Peruvian government “and stands ready to support relief efforts with measures including the release of emergency funds and the deployment of a team of disaster assessment and co-ordination experts,” UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

The announcement came just after Peruvian President Alan Garcia Perez declared a state of emergency.

Dozens of bodies lay beneath sheets at damaged hospitals today as medics and rescuers struggled to help survivors of a magnitude-8.0 earthquake.

Communications problems and huge cracks in the coastal Pan American Highway complicated efforts by emergency services.

The centre of the destruction was in Peru’s southern desert, in the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port of Pisco, about 125 miles south-east of the capital, Lima.

Pisco’s mayor said at least 200 people were buried in the rubble of a church where they had been attending a service. Attendance at churches yesterday was high because August 15 is a Roman Catholic holy day celebrated as the occasion when the Virgin Mary passed into heaven.

In Ica, a city of 120,000 near the epicentre, a fourth of the buildings collapsed, at least 57 bodies were brought to the morgue and injured parents and children crowded into a hospital where they waited for attention on cots.

Several Ica churches also were damaged, including the historic Senor de Luren church.

Cable news station Canal N said 17 people were killed inside one.

The earthquake’s magnitude was raised from 7.9 to 8 today by the US Geological Survey.

At least 15 aftershocks followed, some as strong as magnitude-6.3.