Peruvians buried their dead and sifted through the rubble of their Amazon villages Thursday after an earthquake ripped through the region, killing more than 100 people, civil defence officials said.
They said the death toll from Tuesday night's quake could rise since landslides and toppled trees blocked rescuers from reaching hard-hit Rodriguez de Mendoza province.Earlier, amateur radio operators and local officials in the remote Amazon region estimated the death toll from the earthquake to be as high as 200, with hundreds missing.
Avalanches of mud and rock swept through at least four villages in the lush, tropical province about 110 miles south of the quake's epicentre, government officials said.
Several hundred people live in the villages, but it was unclear how many were killed or injured by the mud-slides, triggered by the quake measuring 5.8 on the open-ended Richter scale.
"The village of Achamal has been almost wiped from the map, and the situation is similar in three other communities," said Oscar Altamirano, president of the regional state development agency.
In the dusty village of Soritor, where 50 people died in the quake, residents held wakes for their relatives on street corners because nearly every house collapsed.
"I've lost everything, my home, my two daughters. Soritor has fallen to the ground," said a tearful woman on Lima television as she mourned her children in front of the pile of rubble that was her home.
"It felt like a pile of dynamite blowing up, and then all the walls started cracking. The whole house collapsed," said a grief-stricken man in the nearby provincial town of Rioja on Lima's Channel 5 television.
Houses collapsed, trees were uprooted and streets cracked in Rioja, where 25 people were reported killed, and in Moyobamba where another eight died and hundreds more were injured.
At least 40 people were still missing in tremor-prone Moyobamba and Rioja, many of them believed entombed in the rubble of their mud-brick homes.
Hospitals filled with people suffering fractures, bruises and head injuries, and about 15,000 people were reported homeless. Civil defense appealed for tents and mattresses to house the homeless.
Dozens of aftershocks rattled the impoverished, agricultural region where most people make their living by growing fruit, coffee or coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine.
Presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa's wife Patricia and former president Fernando Belaunde Terry toured the area and brought in 12 metric tons of food and medicines.
*****
Mexico gets jolt
A strong earthquake rattled Mexico City early Thursday, sending some frightened residents into the streets, but did not cause any damage or injuries. Local television said the National Autonnous University Seismological Institute reported the earthquake, which registered 6.1 on the Richter scale. It struck at 1:35 a.m. local time with an epicenter off the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.