Hope fades as Algerian quake toll tops 1,600

Hopes of finding survivors amid the devastation of Algeria's earthquake faded yesterday as the death toll topped 1,600 despite frantic efforts by teams of foreign rescue workers and sniffer dogs.

A bright moment amid the desolation came when a baby girl was lifted alive from an apartment block which had collapsed into one storey of mangled concrete after the country's worst tremor in more than two decades struck on Wednesday night.

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told a news conference the dead now numbered more than 1,600.

While he said some 4,200 people had been pulled alive from the rubble of flattened buildings since Wednesday, he said: "The victim figures are expected to rise."

State news agency APS said 7,207 people had so far been counted as being injured in the quake, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale.

The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the death toll could reach 2,000 as rescue teams discover more victims in outlying villages along the North African state's heavily populated Mediterranean coast.

"We do not want to get into the body count game but you are probably going to end up with 2,000," said the federation's operations manager, Iain Logan.

The chief priest of the main mosque in the capital, Algiers, told worshippers at Friday prayers that the calamity was - like the flooding and quakes that have plagued the country for years - a message from God to those who had chosen to forget him.

"People think the earthquake is a natural phenomenon, they think they can explain it through science," Mohamed Slimane said in a sermon that was aired on national television. "They forget who is behind it, it is God."