Peru earthquake kills 437, bodies in streets

PISCO, Peru, Aug 16 (Reuters) Peruvians pulled hundreds of dead from the rubble of homes and churches today, piling some of them on street corners after a huge earthquake ravaged the country's central coast.

At least 437 people were killed in the 8.0-magnitude quake last night, Peru's civil defense agency INDECI said. Another 1,300 people were injured, and many expected the death toll to rise further.

As rescuers scrambled through the debris in search of survivors, dazed residents guarded bodies in the street, not sure where to take them.

''We don't know what to do. I don't know where to hold a wake for her,'' Jose Flores, a boy about 12 years old, said as he stood near the body of his dead mother outside their destroyed adobe home in the city of Chincha 200 km south of the capital Lima, .

''The wall just came down and crushed her when I was outside,'' he said.

In the nearby city of Pisco, 48 bodies were laid out in the main square.

The US Geological Survey upgraded the quake's magnitude to 8.0 from an earlier 7.9 measurement, and powerful aftershocks rattled the country on Thursday morning.

Many mud-brick houses crumbled, residents placed the bodies of relatives and neighbors on street corners and hospitals were overwhelmed with injured.

Wounded people lay on the floor in Chincha's San Jose hospital, where walls were destroyed by the quake.

''A wall fell on her. There are no beds and they can't give her a bed until they can X-ray her, but there's no power,'' Hernando Rodriguez told a Peruvian television station as he sat with his daughter in one hospital, hoping she could be moved to Lima.

PRISONERS ESCAPE Hundreds of prisoners ran out of Chincha's Tambo de Mora prison, an old building that collapsed during the earthquake.

''The authorities couldn't do anything. It was really hard to control all the prisoners,'' Manuel Aguilar, vice president of Peru's prison authority, told Reuters. He said 29 prisoners stayed behind.

In the San Juan de Dios hospital in Pisco, doctor Ricardo Cabrera said staff was struggling to cope with 200 wounded and more than 40 dead, with no power and a large part of the hospital damaged.

He said there was no morgue in the city and bodies were being gathered in the main square and on street corners.

''There are a lot of bodies still in the rubble,'' Cabrera told RPP radio, calling for blood, bandages and medicines.

Many people were forced to sleep outside in cities devastated by the huge tremor, which cracked highways and cut power and telephone lines.

''The first impression of the team is that damage is severe, especially to houses,'' said Giorgio Ferrario, the South America representative for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

President Alan Garcia sent condolences to the families of the quake's victims and said the country had narrowly escaped even greater disaster.

It was still one of the worst natural disasters to hit Peru in the last century. In 1970, an earthquake killed an estimated 50,000 Peruvians in catastrophic avalanches of ice and mud that buried the town of Yungay.

The USGS said the quake on Wednesday was centered about 145 km southeast of Lima at a depth of around 40 km and was closely followed by nine aftershocks.

Peru is a leading minerals producer, but many of its major mines sit far away from the quake zone. The Cerro Lindo copper, zinc and lead mine near the zone suspended operations due to power cuts but its structures were not damaged.

Reuters SZ VP0108