More than 234 people have been confirmed dead with hundreds more missing in El Salvador and Guatemala after a strong earthquake of 7.6 magnitude rocked Central America and southern Mexico. Casualties mounted as landslides and building collapses hit many areas.
A National Police spokesman in El Salvador said 234 deaths had been confirmed. Officials in Guatemala reported another two fatalities.
The Salvadorian President, Snr Francisco Flores, declared a national state of emergency as efforts began to restore power and communications across the country.
Efforts to bring in relief supplies were hampered with electrical power cut off and the international airport closed.
Santa Tecla, a middle-class suburb of San Salvador, and the Pacific coast province of La Libertad were badly hit.
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In Santa Tecla, distraught survivors searched for relatives and friends after a hillside collapsed on as many as 500 homes.
"Everything was buried, and my entire family is dead", one young woman said.
Hundreds of emergency workers and volunteers worked along side huge cranes to shovel dirt from around collapsed homes in a sea of mud, tree limbs and rubble.
"This is one of the worst emergencies we have had", said rescue worker Manuel de Jesus Guzman. "For us this has been very sad". The local police Chief Snr Mauricio Sandoval said some 800 people were missing in one neighborhood. The Red Cross said more than 1,000 people might have been buried under fallen buildings.
"We have detected at least two sites where people are alive and need us to rescue them," one rescue worker said.
Daisy de Beltran, an administrator at San Salvador's Rosales Hospital, said patients were brought in with multiple fractures, many from Santa Tecla. Others were flown in by helicopter from the provinces. The hospital treated an overflow of injured in tents set up on its grounds.
In a national broadcast last night Salvadoran President Flores said rescue efforts and re-establishing public services such as electricity and telephone communications were priorities, and he called on citizens and the international community to help.
Calling for help, he pleaded for support from experts in rescue, communications, food and medicine.
Mexico sent 50 Army troops and five C-130 airplanes to El Salvador earlier today to help with relief efforts, while rescue workers from neighboring Guatemala arrived lastnight.
El Salvador press reports said a hospital collapsed in the southern city of San Miguel, and the Red Cross said people were trapped when a church fell in the northern city of Santa Ana, where at least four deaths were reported.
The highway between San Salvador and Santa Ana, 35 miles to the north, was blocked by a landslide, and a bridge was damaged, officials said.
Guatemala National Disaster Commission spokesman Luis Lara said two children died in Jalpatagua, near the border with El Salvador, when another house collapsed.
The United States Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was about 65 miles (105 km) southeast of El Salvador's capital, San Salvador, off the Pacific coast.
The 7.6 magnitude quake occurred at 11:34 a.m. (1734 GMT) Saturday and was felt across El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras and as far north as Mexico City. REUTERS