Weary rescue teams found only rotting corpses under the sun-baked rubble of Algeria's earthquake yesterday as the death toll rose relentlessly toward 2,000.
Three days after the North African country's most powerful quake in over 20 years, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia prepared his people to accept that there may be no more survivors.
But there was no quiet acceptance in savaged towns along the Mediterranean coast. The daily Le Matin said Ouyahia himself was heckled during a visit to one and his interior minister was pelted with stones in another.
The rare show of public defiance came as shock turned to anger among the thousands of homeless, many of whom accused the authorities of failing to offer rapid assistance and allowing flimsy buildings to go up in a notoriously quake-prone area.
"The army has been here, but without equipment that could help us get people out," said one man in the epicentre town of Zemmouri as he stood among mounds of blankets, clothes and sticks of bread donated by well-wishers across the country.
And then his tears came. "We are all pulling together, God knows we are doing our best. It's the least we can do."
The government said it was racing against time to prevent the outbreak of epidemics due to bodies rotting under debris in temperatures above 30°C and a lack of both clean running water and sanitary facilities.
Civil protection officials ordered rescue workers to wear face masks and spray affected areas with chemicals.
Health Ministry press officer Slim Belkacem told Reuters a centre was being set up in Boumerdes, which accounted for more than half of the known deaths, to monitor for outbreaks of disease. But officials faced an uphill battle because four locals hospitals had been destroyed, he said. According to the latest official figures, 1,875 people died and 8,081 were injured in Wednesday's quake, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. Well over a thousand people were still missing.
Earthquake rescue veterans from 14 countries were still hard at work alongside local teams, using sniffer dogs, heat sensors and sound probes to find signs of life under the compacted concrete of buildings that simply sank to their knees.
A flicker of hope came on Friday when French rescuers pulled out alive a two-and-a-half year old girl from the rubble and the BBC reported yesterday that efforts were under way to save an 11-year-old girl trapped under a building in Boumerdes.
But there was no real hope left at what remained of a hotel in the seaside village of Zemmouri-El-Bahri, where on Friday Japanese and Turkish rescuers pulled out a 21-year-old man who had survived for 50 hours thanks to a tiny cavity in the debris.
"This was a six-floor building, it collapsed like a pancake," said the leader of the 61-strong Japanese team, nodding towards a mound barely more than one storey high.
"Maybe there are still people alive, but we had the dogs and the equipment here this morning. There was nothing."
Prime Minister Ouyahia had arrived at the same conclusion, saying in comments broadcast on state radio: "The reality is that a moment will come when the search for survivors is over."
In Reghaia, not far from Algiers, up to 800 people were feared crushed when a 10-storey apartment tower crashed to the ground in a smoking jumble of cement and iron rods.
Efforts continued apace to restore damaged phone lines, power and water supplies and the authorities said they would start destroying buildings which had been cracked beyond repair.
"We don't know if the buildings are OK. We need experts to come and tell us if we can go back," said Salah Aouras, who was living in a makeshift tent with his six children in Boumerdes. "We're still feeling the after-shocks and can't take the risk."