Fresh tremor rocks Algeria

Up to nine people were feared dead and almost 200 were injured when a new earthquake hit Algeria during rush-hour, flattening buildings and terrifying Algerians less than a week after a quake killed 2,200.

Just before dinner-time Tuesday several buildings collapsed in the towns of Zemmouri and Boumerdes as the new quake struck the capital Algiers and a Mediterranean coastal strip to the east that suffered widespread death and destruction in last week's disaster.

"Families rushed out of buildings. Everyone took to the streets. In central Algiers people were scared, real scared, holding their children and babies in their arms," a Reuters correspondent in the capital said.

Officials said the quake measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and that its epicenter was in Zemmouri, some 30 miles east of Algiers. The epicenter of last Wednesday's 6.8 quake was also near Zemmouri and it struck at a similar time.

"One person is probably still alive but (she) is very deep in the building and is unfortunately starting to cough," the leader of a French rescue team at the site of the collapsed 15-storey building in the town of Reghaia told state radio.

"It's very hard to determine (the number of people missing)...there's talk of seven or nine. It could be less or more," he said.

Earlier, deputy Interior Minister Mohamed Guendil said three people may have been killed as the building, which was too badly damaged by last week's quake to live in, collapsed. He told state television 187 people had been injured "due to panic." Many of those injured were in Algiers, Zemmouri and Boumerdes.

The latest disaster comes less than a day after 14 Algerians were killed in a suspected attack by Islamic rebels in the west of Algeria -- a country just coming out of a decade of bloodshed in which between 100,000 and 150,000 people have been killed.

The new quake will further pressure already stretched hospital and other essential services. Many international rescue teams who flew in after last week's quake left Monday and Tuesday as they gave up searching for survivors, giving way to aid and health workers to take care of survivors.

Authorities urged people to be calm and stay away from any unsafe buildings. "Don't panic. It's a strong aftershock (from last Wednesday's quake)," an official from Algeria's Geophysical, Astronomical and Astrophysics Research Center said.

He said there had been around 1,000 aftershocks.

The latest official toll from last week's quake is 2,218 dead and 9,497 injured. Boumerdes suffered more than half the deaths. An estimated 20,000 people were left homeless.

With hundreds unaccounted for under sandwiched floors of apartment blocks, the body count could still climb.

Shock and grief gave way to anger at the weekend as Algerians turned on their government, accusing it of doing little to help the homeless and of turning a blind eye to the corner-cutting of unscrupulous builders in a quake-prone area.