Rescue teams battled through the night and the whole day yesterday to find survivors after a powerful quake ravaged Peru's central coast, killing about 450 people in one of the country's worst natural disasters in the last 100 years.

The 8-magnitude quake struck late on Wednesday and many of its victims were poor, killed when their flimsy mud-brick homes caved in. Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed, forcing residents to lay bodies out on city streets.

Peruvian fire fighters and the UN said the earthquake had killed at least 450 people, while civil defence authorities put the latest death toll at 437. About 2,000 more were injured. More than 24 hours after the quake, a series of aftershocks sowed panic in the hardest hit towns south of the capital Lima.

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