ALGERIA: Rescuers in Algeria armed with axes and shovels and using their bare hands clawed through rubble yesterday to reach hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people feared trapped two days after an earthquake that has already claimed 1,600 lives.
International experts flew in from across Europe, and rescue teams backed by volunteers fought exhaustion to hunt for the living.
Locals blamed illegal real-estate deals for the shoddy construction of northern Algeria's slums and luxury villas, now made equal in the piles of rubble.
Hopes were fading fast of finding survivors beneath twisted debris that is all that remains of dozens of apartment blocks, flattened by the quake, which measured at 6.8 on the Richter scale and was the worst to hit Algeria in more than two decades.
The Algerian Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Ouyahia, raised the death toll yesterday, saying 1,600 people had been killed and more than 7,000 injured.
Officials have warned that the death toll is likely to rise as the rescuers uncover more bodies.
An 18-month-old baby was pulled from rubble in nearby Boumerdes.
A 12-year-old girl was also pulled out alive, more than 34 hours after an apartment building collapsed on top of her in a village 15 kilometres east of the capital.
Two days after the quake struck, the initial shock and trauma were beginning to give way to anger, with victims turning on real-estate developers, accusing them of being corrupt and using shoddy construction methods.
"Why is it that the new buildings have collapsed and the old ones are still standing?" asked one man, surveying a pile of flattened buildings east of Algiers, where many were believed to be entombed.
Entire areas of ramshackle housing crumbled like cards when the quake struck just as families were gathering at home for dinner, or to watch a UEFA football match on the television.
The worst-affected towns were Boumerdes, Reghaia and Rouiba on the eastern outskirts of Algiers.
Some, such as Mr Salim Aoudia, a civil engineer, blamed "a new race of entrepreneurs, without means or knowhow, whose only goal is to con the nouveaux riches" by building them shoddy beachside villas.
But an architect who gave his name only as Amine B said the state was at fault.
"We could have predicted all this. It's the product of the negligence of the state which has no policy of urban development," he said.
Germany, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, South Korea, Russia and Turkey, as well as the United Nations and the European Union, have all pledged to aid a huge effort by the Algerians to help their already impoverished people.