Residents of Georgia's capital were cleaning up today after a strong earthquake killed at least five people.
Thousands of Tbilisi residents spent the night outside, rocking their children to sleep on park benches because they were too scared to return to their dilapidated apartment blocks.
The former Soviet republic's capital remained without electricity and telephone service, including mobile connections, in many districts.
Two women and an 18-year-old man were killed when the wall of a house fell on them, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Another woman died from injuries sustained when she jumped out of a window in panic, and one person died of a heart attack apparently prompted by the earthquake.
Boulders fell from the cliffs that line the river valley Tbilisi is perched on, spilling onto unlit roads and making driving dangerous. Building walls cracked, and chunks of plaster fell from ceilings.
The Georgian seismological station in Tbilisi said the quake had a magnitude of 5 or 6. The US Geological Survey said the tremor had a magnitude of 4.8 and that its epicentre was six miles northwest of the capital.
AP