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Taiwan quake toll nears 2000

Rescue workers searched furiously for the second day today for survivors trapped in collapsed buildings after Taiwan's worst earthquake on record killed more than 1,700 people and buried 2,800 under mountains of rubble.

About 4,000 people were injured, thus swamping medical centres and prompting appeals for doctors to report to hospitals to help.

More than 24 hours after the tremor struck, tens of thousands of terrified residents around the island camped outdoors early on Wednesday -- either afraid to go indoors or homeless.

Rescue teams and sniffer dogs from the United States, Russia, Germany, Singapore and Turkey were due on Wednesday to join the hunt for survivors and efforts to set up humanitarian relief.

Taiwan's arch-rival, mainland communist China, expressed its sympathy for the victims and China's Red Cross offered 100,000 dollars in cash and relief goods worth 500,000 yuan (60,000 dollars).

''We are willing to provide all possible assistance to reduce losses from the earthquake disaster,'' Chinese President Jiang Zemin said.

Strong aftershocks were felt in Taipei early today but no damage was reported.

The interior ministry said that as of 0600 local time today (2200 GMT yesterday) 1,712 people were dead, 4,008 injured, 2,820 trapped in buildings and 227 missing.

Most analysts said it was too soon to estimate the cost of the damages. But Liu Tai-Ying, chairman of Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party's business management committee and head of the China Development Industrial Bank, said the earthquake could have caused 100 billion Taiwan dollars (3 billion US dollars) in damages.

Most of the dead, injured and trapped were in Taichung and Nantou counties in central Taiwan about 150 km (90 miles) south of Taipei, or in Yun-Lin on the coast facing mainland China.

The earthquake registered 7.6 on the open-ended Richter Scale -- the strongest recorded in Taiwan and more powerful than Turkey's 7.4 tremor on 17 August which killed more than 15,000 people.

Rescue work moved slowly in the central region with severely damaged roads and bridges hampering access and transportation of injured.

Power and water supplies were knocked out throughout much of the central region, leaving victims trapped in darkness hours after the tremor.

In Nantou, emergency rooms were overflowing with injured and temporary hospitals were set up in the streets.

Officials said 4.96 million households on this island of 22 million people were without power more than 24 hours after the earthquake.

UNI

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