Rescuers pull toddler from quake wreckage

The two and a half year old girl was rescued by a French team which had laboured all night to get her from the wreckage of a five storey block in Bourmerdes, 30 miles from the capital Algiers.

Her father had refused experts permission to amputate one of her arms to speed up the rescue.

Six members of her family, including her mother, were still missing tonight. All has been at a party celebrating a forthcoming wedding when the quake struck on Wednesday night.

Exhausted by nearly two days of digging for survivors, rescue workers in Boumerdes, said hope of finding more people alive under the rubble was beginning to fade.

Saa Sayah, a captain in Algeria’s civil protection unit, said rescuers had already stopped listening for voices of the living, but instead were being guided by the scent of decaying bodies.

“There is not much hope here,” he said in front of a large, four storey building that had collapsed.

“We have already pulled up four bodies, but we can’t get further inside.”

At another building, two women wearing black headscarves wailed and thumped their hands on their chests as a Swiss rescue team pulled the body of a 12-year-old girl from the wreckage.

Grieving relatives held her dust-coated body tightly before she was covered in a blanket and put in the back of a yellow van.

Bodies wrapped in blankets and plastic bags piled up in morgues as the toll mounted.

Weary volunteers, their faces caked with cement dust and sweat, climbed huge mounds of smashed concrete to look for survivors.

Aid poured into the North African country from around the world: a field hospital from Germany, sniffer dogs from Sweden and Switzerland, emergency rescue experts from Britain Russia. Turkey, which suffers frequent quakes, sent a search team, tents and medicine.

Police erected roadblocks and stepped up patrols to prevent looting after thousands of people fled their homes, fearful of further quakes. Many slept overnight in the streets and in public parks, and light aftershocks jolted the region today.

Entire families were among the dead after the 6.8-magnitude quake flattened apartment houses and trapped countless bodies under the wreckage. Buildings leaned at crazy angles. Domes toppled off mosques. The injured jammed into hospitals.

At another village in the quake zone, Corso, residents’ grief at the deaths of their loved ones was quickly turning to anger at what they said was a slow and inadequate official response.

“We have only our hands and hammers,” said Ismail Lizir, a 42-year-old. “It’s been nearly three days, and there has been no sign of local authorities. What we need is heavy machinery.”

Rescue services were overwhelmed. Women cried the names of their dead or injured children.

Bodies were piled at the town morgue, wrapped in blankets or plastic bags. Machines lifted away rubble.

“The building shook like a ship. I sheltered with my daughters in a door-frame. That’s why we’re still alive,” said Fatma Ferhani, 70.

Foreign aid groups and governments sprang into action, rushing over rescue workers, doctors and dogs to search for survivors. Food, blankets and medicine for the shocked, injured and homeless were on their way.

Shocks were felt into the Mediterranean. The quake triggered seven foot waves in Spain’s Balearic islands, 175 miles north of Algiers, that damaged or destroyed 150 boats.