The horrific extent of the destruction caused by the earthquake which shook western Colombia on Monday became clear yesterday as dawn rose over the devastated city of Armenia.
The earthquake, which measured six on the Richter scale, flattened more than half the city of 250,000 people.
Civil defence officials last night put the preliminary casualty figures at 550 dead and 2,700 injured across five mountainous provinces in Colombia's coffee-growing belt.
"There are more than 1,000 dead, perhaps more than 2,000 in Armenia alone," said Capt Ciro Antonio Guiza, the city's deputy fire chief.
Fires still burned out of control in some suburbs yesterday morning, as the stunned population began the grisly task of digging out the dead and injured.
Emergency services, whose headquarters were destroyed by the quake, were forced to treat many of the injured on the floors of commandeered buses. Schools and stadiums have been converted into makeshift shelters and morgues.
"Hell has come to Colombia," said Mr Alfonso Ramirez, who was watching television when the quake hit. His house remained intact, but when he stepped outside everything around him had been reduced to rubble.
"From underneath the remains of my neighbour's house I could hear the cries of Celina and the screams of her children," he said, fighting back tears. Digging for three hours with only a stick to lever away the stones, Mr Ramirez managed to rescue three children aged six, 12 and 14. But he could not save his neighbour and her youngest son, aged three.
Red Cross members worked through the night to rescue three men buried in a pawn shop where they had been drinking coffee. To applause from a crowd, the men, who had dived between a safe and the wall seconds before the shop collapsed around them, were pulled free after 13 hours.
"Why has God done this to us?" wept Ms Catalina Valencia, whose two children aged six and 15 were crushed to death in the doorway of their house.
"They were only two steps behind me as we ran out. They died in each other's arms and there was nothing I could do."
"We don't have enough needles, antibiotics, basic medicines. We have no ventilators. People should bring anything they can, even toilet paper, with them," said a nurse, Ms Gloria Cardenas.
There was havoc in the city's jail, where one prisoner was killed and 15 injured. The majority of inmates escaped when the prison wall and police guard house collapsed.
Armenia and the province of Quindio took the brunt of the quake. The town of Calarca was also largely destroyed, with at least 100 people killed and 300 injured. In neighbouring Cajamarca, the quake upturned the town's graveyard, scattering scores of corpses around the ruins of the church.