The authorities in Venezuela say they now fear that up to 50,000 people may have been killed in the flooding and mudslides that have devastated the country - but they concede the true figure will never be known.

A senior civil defence official said many bodies remain buried in the mud that swept through entire coastal communities, in what is being described as Latin America's worst natural disaster this century.

Almost a week after the flooding and landslides, which wiped out a 100km (60-mile) stretch of the country's Caribbean coast, the authorities are still rescuing survivors.

Burying the dead

President Hugo Chavez is urging them to leave the worst-hit areas, to avoid the health risks caused by the destruction of water and sewage facilities. And, as rescuers continue to airlift survivors to safety, the authorities have begun burying the victims to prevent the spread of disease.

About 200,000 people have been left homeless and emergency shelters are now dangerously overcrowded.

The president has outlined plans for a huge rehabilitation effort to resettle the homeless. In the short-term, new homes will be built on military bases and farmland donated by landowners.

The Red Cross has also warned that, while there is enough food and medical supplies for the time being, the entire relief system is on the verge of collapse.

The minister in charge of the aid operation has said the aid already pledged is still not enough, as entire states will have to be re-built from scratch.

Bearing the brunt of the disaster was Vargas state, an area with a population of 350,000, an hour's drive from the capital, Caracas.

There, mudslides and raging rivers swept away shantytowns perched on steep slopes of the lush Avila mountain and left tall buildings marooned in a sea of rock-hard debris.

The head of the Civil Defence agency, Angel Rangel, has highlighted the case of Carmen de Uria, a community where only about 100 of the 3,000 homes were left standing.

By the cruellest of ironies, 2000 marks the end of the UN's international decade for natural disaster reduction

An earthquake struck western Algeria Wednesday killing at least five people, state-run television and residents said. Residents reported heavy damage in the town of Ain Timouchant, 45 miles west of Oran which also felt the tremor. The television said the earthquake, which registered 5.6 degrees on the open-ended Richter scale, also shook the western province of Tlemcen. A quake of that intensity is powerful enough to cause heavy damage in a populated area.

KARYASARI, Indonesia - A strong earthquake shook the main Indonesian island of Java, killing at least four people and injuring 91 people, local officials said today. The magnitude 6.4 quake, which hit Tuesday night, damaged hundreds of houses in several villages in West Java province, they said.

"We have reports of four people dead. Many houses were badly damaged," said Muhtadi, who like many Indonesians uses one name. One person was killed in Karyasari village in Pagelaran district, 75 miles southwest of Jakarta. The hamlet of 4,000 people was one of the areas worst hit, with 100 houses collapsed or damaged.

Many villagers spent the day sifting through rubble looking for anything that could be salvaged. At least 91 people were reported injured. Many were hit by falling debris as they ran from their homes, Muhtadi said.

The area affected by Tuesday's quake lies near Krakatau, an offshore volcano in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra.

It blew up in 1883 in what was one of the biggest eruptions in recorded history. About 36,000 people died.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes because of its location on the Pacific ``Ring of Fire,'' a line of volcanically active areas stretching from the western coast of the Americas across to Japan, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

The death toll from mudslides and flash floods that swamped Venezuela's Caribbean coast last week rose to at least 10,000 on Monday, as hundreds of desperate survivors ransacked the main cargo port. The streets around the port teemed with people left behind by a massive air, land and sea evacuation of the coastal Vargas state which was devastated by torrential rains that lashed the South American country last week. "Definitely it won't be less than 10,000 dead," Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel told Reuters.

At a news conference later, Rangel said the death toll could reach 20,000, adding that "any figure we give is more in the realm of speculation than reality." The death toll would make it Venezuela's worst ever natural disaster. It would also surpass the 9,000 people killed in Central America by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

An earthquake with magnitude 6.1 shook the Pacific island of Guam early Sunday, at 8:54 a.m. (7:54 p.m. EST Saturday) and the epicenter was estimated to be 40 miles south-southwest of Guam, Reuters reported. Residents said some buildings in the U.S. territory swayed and many rushed out of their homes.

A strong earthquake with magnitude 6.1 jolted Indonesia's easternmost province of Irian Jaya on Sunday at 2:44 a.m. local time, Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said. The tremor was centered 64 miles northwest of Jayapura, the provincial capital. (AP)