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PISCO, Peru - A powerful aftershock rattled Peru on Friday, sowing panic as rescue teams and volunteers scrambled to find survivors of a massive earthquake earlier this week that killed about 500 people.
The aftershock had a 5.9 magnitude and damaged some homes in the region of Huancavelica, which lies south of the capital Lima and is one of Peru's most impoverished areas.
No one was killed but the aftershock terrified some residents of the towns hit hardest by Wednesday's 8.0 magnitude earthquake.
In Pisco, people standing in long lines for food and water scattered when the ground started shaking.
Many of the victims of Wednesday's earthquake were poor, killed when their flimsy mud-brick homes collapsed. Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed, forcing residents to lay bodies out on city streets.
Teams of volunteers are trying to help emergency crews find the living and treat the injured.
"We've been working since last night and before we arrived they had rescued a woman and a child, but they were dead," said Paul Cana, a 30-year-old miner on a rescue team. "I don't think there are any survivors."
But the rescue of a man from the rubble of a collapsed church brought some hope to search teams.
About 510 people have been confirmed dead and 1000 wounded since the big quake, the United Nations said on Friday.
Peru's civil defence agency said 446 people perished, but an official said the toll may rise as the rubble of ruined homes was cleared and information trickled in from more remote areas.
"My feeling is that the number could rise, I don't want it to, but..." said Walter Tapia, an operations coordinator for the agency.
The towns of Nazca and Palpa that flank the Nazca Desert -- famous for gigantic images of animals carved into the barren earth thousands of years ago -- were hard to reach.
"We have other populations that were also affected from which we have recently begun to receive reports," Tapia said.
Thousands of people were left homeless by the quake and have been forced to sleep outside. They complained of a lack of medical attention and emergency supplies.
Pisco, renowned for the grape liquor that bears its name, was worst affected by the quake along with the towns of Ica and Chincha, where hundreds of prisoners escaped from a jail when the tremor tore the old building apart.
The earthquake was one of the worst natural disasters to hit the South American country during the last century. In 1970, an earthquake killed an estimated 50,000 people in avalanches of ice and mud that buried the town of Yungay.
President Alan Garcia visited the quake-hit areas and promised adequate supplies for victims.
"Nobody is going to die from thirst or hunger. That I can guarantee," he said.
- REUTERS
