Houses destroyed, tents to live in

ALGIERS, May 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The death toll from the earthquake that struck Algeria crossed Sunday, May 25, the 2,000 mark, with more than 8,600 people injured, the Interior Ministry said.

Two thousand forty-seven people are now known to have died in Wednesday's tremor, the ministry said announcing a new provisional toll, while 8,626 were injured in the quake, which struck the capital Algiers and its environs, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said on state radio he feared no further survivors would be found from the deadly tremor, which hit the area around the capital last Wednesday.

"Rescue operations are continuing, but there comes a moment after which the operations will begin to become hopeless," he said.

The Premier made the comments hours after three further survivors were pulled from the rubble, nearly three days after the earthquake.

A mother and child were rescued from the ruins of their home in Bourmerdes, 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Algiers, while a 21-year-old man was unearthed from a destroyed hotel in Zemmouri, 20 kilometers further to the east more than 52 hours after the quake brought it down.

The Boumerdes region has been hardest hit, with 1,267 people killed and nearly 2,800 injured, while 770 lives were claimed and over 4,700 people were injured in the Algiers region.

Authorities are now increasingly worried over a looming epidemic, as hundreds of bodies were still lying shrouded in sheets outside scores of buildings throughout the area.

Rising temperatures in the past two days have also contributed to the fear of the spread of disease.

Scores Of Aftershocks

"They've scrimped on (construction materials), and we have paid with our lives," a survivor

To add salt to injury, the capital and its environs have been rattled by scores of aftershocks since the earthquake earlier this week, including two tremors of 4.1 on the Richter scale Saturday, according to the Algerian seismological lab.

While there were no immediate reports of the aftershocks causing any damage, it was feared the tremors could cause already dangerously unstable buildings to collapse, leading to further casualties.

The epicenter of the strongest aftershock to hit the region was located in Thenia, 60 kilometers (38 miles) east of the capital. It struck at 8:21 pm Saturday (1921 GMT) and measured 4.1.

The Thenia region was severely affected by Wednesday's quake - it measured 6.3 on the Richter scale.
The Algerian seismological institute CRAAG said more than 100 aftershocks of varying strength took place Friday and Saturday throughout the region.

The aftershocks, markedly weaker than the one at 1921 GMT, continued late Saturday.

A wide scale power outage also occurred late Saturday for about one hour in the capital, the state gas and electricity company Sonelgaz said, due to technical reasons.

Fury Replaces Sadness

In another development, the rescue of a mother and child from the ruins of Algeria's killer earthquake Saturday provided a burst of elation against a backdrop of growing fury over the massive loss of life blamed on corruption.

With chances of finding further survivors approaching zero on the third day after the quake, the two were found alive in the pile of rubble they used to call home in Bourmedes.

As the official death surpassed the 2,000 mark, hundreds of protesters Saturday hurled insults and some stones at President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, forcing him to abort a visit to Bourmedes, leaving after just a few minutes.

"Rulers - killers" they shouted. "Get lost, get screwed!" one cried. "Tents! Water! We need everything!" shouted others.

Anger at the authorities accused of negligence reached boiling point in several other areas badly hit by the tremor, including Algiers itself, where residents of a derelict building demanding to be re-housed scuffled with police.

In the eastern suburb of Dergana, the residents of buildings gutted by the quake were crying out for assistance.

"We have old people, sick and injured people, a child with diarrhea. ... We're not asking for the moon, just for a few officials to come and declare our area a disaster area," said Ahmed Louber, a civil servant, according to AFP.

Liberal newspapers and opposition politicians also slammed the government's response to the crisis as woefully inadequate, and placed the blame for the heavy death toll largely on a corrupt building industry.

Buildings erected since 1980, date of Algeria's last major earthquake which claimed some 3,000 lives, are subject to strict standards designed to protect them from seismic jolts.

Many of the collapses occurred in unstable areas legally off-limits to builders, or were due to shoddy construction materials and methods, critics noted.

"They've scrimped on (construction materials), and we have paid with our lives," a survivor told AFP.

The government has announced that victims' relatives would receive 70,000 dinars (some 7,500 euros, 8,900 dollars) for each family member who died, but angry survivors gave little credence to the offer.

Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said it was unfair to talk of negligence or inaction by the authorities, given the amount of effort that had been made in rescue work.

"Given the serious concern, it's normal there should be protest," he said on French television. But Belkhadem insisted the public authorities had responded quickly to the crisis, mobilizing all available resources, and thanked other countries for their prompt assistance.