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| Sunday, 25 May 2003 |
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Algerian quake toll rises to 1,720 By John Chalmers BOUMERDES, Algeria, May 24 (Reuters) - Hopes dwindled on Saturday of finding more survivors from Algeria's deadliest earthquake in more than 20 years as the death toll rose to more than 1,720. Rescue teams with sniffer dogs and listening devices searched through the rubble of buildings flattened by the quake along the North African country's Mediterranean coast. More than 7,600 people have been injured in Wednesday's quake, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. Authorities tried to prevent the outbreak of epidemics as bodies stuck under the debris rotted in temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). Civil protection officials ordered rescue workers to wear face masks, state radio reported. Thousands slept outside overnight, worried that after-shocks could bring down buildings weakened by the earth's shudders. Authorities, working to restore damaged telecommunications lines, power and water, said they would start destroying buildings too badly damaged for people to return home to. Algerians were increasingly venting their anger, saying the government had allowed rickety buildings to go up in the country's notoriously quake-prone Mediterranean coast. The earthquake did not level whole districts. It knocked down buildings here and there, weakened others and left many older ones still standing. DEATH TOLL EXPECTED TO RISE Rescue workers said there was little chance of finding any more people still alive and Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said on Friday evening the death toll was expected to rise. Several hundred foreign rescue workers, mostly from European Union countries, continued to arrive. Officials said the area worst-hit was middle-class Boumerdes, to the east of Algiers. That town alone accounted for some 840 of the dead and more than 1,200 missing. In neighbouring Reghaia up to 800 people were feared crushed when a 10-storey apartment tower crashed to the ground in a smoking jumble of cement and iron rods. "Deformed bodies have been taken out. You can smell the burning flesh yourself," Slimane Chabouni, a 24-year-old resident of Reghaia, told Reuters. The earthquake struck when many inhabitants of this Maghreb nation were having dinner. Others had settled in front of the television to watch a major European soccer match. In what is increasingly becoming a task of bringing out the dead, a flicker of hope came on Friday when French rescuers pulled out alive a two-and-a-half year old girl from the rubble. |
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