Peru's President Alan Garcia has called for the orderly distribution of emergency supplies as desperate victims of a magnitude-8 earthquake on Peru's southern coast looted markets and blocked arriving aid trucks.
The delivery of goods "must be gradual," Garcia told reporters last night, adding that he ordered 200 navy officials to the area to maintain order.
However, television images showed hungry survivors leaving pharmacies and markets with bags full of food and other items. Some people ransacked a public market, while mobs looted a refrigerated trailer and blocked aid trucks.
Few buildings still stood in the fishing city of Pisco in the wake of a quake that struck Wednesday afternoon, killing at least 510 people. Many of the structures not reduced to rubble were rickety deathtraps waiting to fall.
Garcia predicted that "a situation approaching normality" would return in 10 days, but acknowledged that reconstruction would take far longer.
Workers are still pull bodies from rubble two days after the earthquake.
The death count remains at 510, according to Peru's fire department, and but the toll is expected to rise as hopes of finding more survivors diminish. At least 1,500 people suffered injuries and Garcia said 80,000 people had lost loved ones, homes or both.