New Delhi: The death toll from an 8.0-magnitude quake rose to 437 on Thursday in Peru as rescuers pulled hundreds of dead and wounded from the rubble of homes and churches.
As the search for survivors continued, dazed residents guarded bodies in the street, not sure where to take them.
Emergency vehicles cruised through the streets of the city picking up bodies and then lining them up on pavements.
President Alan Garcia visited the devastated city of Pisco - which local reports say has been 70 per cent destroyed by the quake.
Garcia did not speak as he toured the area, but Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge Del Castillo said people need food.
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 and hospitals have been overwhelmed with injured from Chincha and Pisco. Forty-eight bodies were laid out in the main square in Pisco.
Peruvians pulled hundreds of dead from the rubble of homes and churches on Thursday piling some of them on street corners after a huge earthquake ravaged the country's central coast the day before.
At least 437 people were killed in the 8.0-magnitude quake on Wednesday night, Peru's civil defense agency INDECI said.
Another 1,300 people were injured, and many expected the death toll to rise further. The town of Ica - home to 120,000 people - has been one of the worst affected areas.
On Wednesday, the town was a sea of rubble with cars crushed under falling debris and the main tower of the Senor de Luren church toppled. Hospitals were overwhelmed with injured on the Pacific coast.
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