330 Killed in Peru Quake

More than 330 people have been killed and hundreds injured after a powerful earthquake hit the coast of Peru today.

The quake - which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and struck near the capital, Lima - toppled buildings, set off landslides and generated a tsunami alert that was later lifted.

Peru's civil defence agency said 337 people had died and 827 were injured.

Earlier, the deputy health minister, Jose Calderon, appealed to Peruvians to donate blood for the injured.

The quake struck at 6.40pm local time (12.40am BST), and was followed by four strong aftershocks. The US geological survey said the epicenter was 90 miles south-east of Lima.

The city of Ica, which has a population of 650,000 and is 165 miles south-east of Lima, was one of the worst hit areas. Mr Calderon described the situation there as "dramatic".

Seventeen people among the dead were killed when a church collapsed, and news reports said people were crowded into hospitals. State doctors called off a national strike, which began yesterday, to tackle the emergency.

Homes in Lima collapsed and many people fled into the streets as the city shook for more than a minute.

"This is the strongest earthquake I've ever felt," Maria Pilar Mena, a 47-year-old sandwich seller, told the Associated Press. "When the quake struck, I thought it would never end."

The Peruvian president, Alan Garcia ordered all police personnel on to the streets of Lima to maintain order. He said he was sending the country's health minister and two other cabinet members to Ica.

Police reported that large boulders had been shaken loose from hills and were blocking the country's central motorway, to the east of Lima.

Callers to Radioprogramas, Peru's main news radio station, said parts of several cities in the south of the country had been hit by blackouts, and the quake knocked out telephone service and mobile phones in the capital.

The last earthquake of this magnitude to strike Peru came in 2001, when 71 people were killed in and around the southern Andean city of Arequipa.