India quake kills 2,000

Hundreds of people may be trapped under the rubble

India's worst earthquake for 50 years has killed more than 2,000 people, as rescuers struggle to help hundreds still trapped under collapsed buildings.

Most of the deaths were reported in the city of Ahmedabad, in the northwestern state of Gujarat, and the small desert town of Bhuj, near the earthquake's epicentre.

The earthquake, measuring between 6.9 and 7.9 on the Richter scale, caused widespread destruction in Gujarat and parts of neighbouring Pakistan, where at least eight people died.

Seismologists warn that further tremors are likely.

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Latest figures put the confirmed death toll in Gujarat province at 2063. Of those, 1400 are from Bhuj, the town at the epicentre of the earthquake.

Floodlights were set up as night fell to help rescuers using crowbars and their bare hands to search through the rubble of hundreds of collapsed buildings.

One report said some of the most badly hurt had died as they waited for treatment in crowded hospitals.

'Calamity'

The Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, said the country was meeting the emergency on a "war footing," and urged everyone to "rally round and fight the calamity".

The ruins of a school in Ahmedabad, where children were feared trapped

The earthquake struck at 0846 (0316 GMT), as India's Republic Day celebrations were getting under way. It shook buildings as far away as Delhi, Bombay, Nepal and Bangladesh.

The military ruler of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, offered India his condolences.

The Indian Government has sent two army battalions to Gujarat to help in the rescue effort, and is supplying thousands of tonnes of grain, tents and medical teams.

The air force said it had landed two helicopters at Bhuj. The runway there is being prepared to handle small planes at the weekend.

Relief workers have been distributing tents and blankets to the homeless as temperatures fall to 7C Celsius.

I am 16 year old from Badin, Sindh, Pakistan. Today in my school my friends and I felt the earth begin to move here and there, and we ran into our playground and prayed to God to save us

E-mail to BBC News Online from M Adnan Yaseen Arain, Pakistan

The quake caused pandemonium among the 4.5 million population of Ahmedabad, where at least 240 people died and dozens of buildings collapsed.

"Both the main city hospitals are full of patients and bodies," Ahmedabad's senior civil official K Srinivas said.

One hospital doctor, Vikram Parjhi, said he had received more than 300 casualties.

Crowds surrounded the fire station begging firefighters to help them dig out relatives from under the rubble.

A BBC correspondent in the city, Jill McGivering, says some giant cranes are being used, but so far the rescue effort has not been very hi-tech. Most of the searching is being done by local people.

A civil engineer in Ahmedabad, Ashvin Upadhyay, said the construction of many of the city's newer buildings was shoddy.

"Nearly all the buildings that have fallen down are multi-storey ones constructed about five years ago. They are all without proper foundations and poorly constructed," he told the French news agency AFP.

"Buildings which are older have proved more solid. It is sad that people have bought new flats with large sums of money. They seem to have been cruelly cheated."

Death tolls in recent Indian earthquakes

Bihar 1988 More than 1,000

Uttar Pradesh 1991 More than 1,000

Maharashtra 1993 At least 7,500

Uttar Pradesh 1999 More than 100

In India's financial centre, Bombay, cracks appeared in walls, and plaster fell from ceilings as some residents took to the streets, fearful of buildings collapsing.

Millions of Hindu pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela festival in India's eastern state of Uttar Pradesh felt the ground sway beneath them, but there was no panic.

The last major earthquake to hit the subcontinent, in 1999, killed about 100 people in the lower Himalaya region.