ALGIERS, May 28: Another aftershock rocked Algeria on Wednesday, the second in 12 hours, causing further despair in the troubled north African country after last week’s massive earthquake killed at least 2,200 people.

Radio stations broadcast appeals calling on people not to panic but also warning them to expect further aftershocks along the geological fault line that stretches across the densely-populated north of the country.

The epicentre of the tremor early Wednesday was in Zemmoria, a region already hard-hit by last week’s quake and located some 70 kilometers east of the capital Algiers, state radio said.

Local seismologists said it reached 5.2 points on the open-ended Richter scale. It followed a tremor on Tuesday night, which sent more buildings crashing down. Some 330 people were lightly injured as they fled in panic after the shock, whose epicentre was also in the Zemmoria region and that measured 5.8 points on the Richter scale.

Most people in Algiers appeared to react calmly to Wednesday morning’s aftershock, which came as the morning rush hour was building up and people were on the way to work.

The tremor appeared to have caused little material damage, but it added to the despair of a people that has suffered previous disastrous earthquakes as well as a brutal civil war that has left some 150,000 people dead.

“Everyone has had enough. Everyone is sick. We can’t go on,” said Said Toukal on Wednesday after the town of Reghaia, east of Algiers, trembled from the latest aftershock.

The evening before his brother Hacene had gone into a 15-storey building, still upright but leaning at at an angle, to look for blankets and family valuables. He appeared at a seventh floor window. And then the ground began to shake and the building collapsed.

Throughout the night teams of rescue workers toiled to shift the rubble and other people who had ignored official advice and gone back into the building were brought out alive, said Captain Said Bellal of the Algerian civil defence force. But not Hacene Toukal.

Rescue operations in the town of Zemmoria were being backed up Wednesday by a heavy security presence after the murder there Tuesday of a policeman, allegedly by Muslim fundamentalists.

Hundreds of soldiers and police officers mounted checkpoints at crossroads and at the main roads into the town.

Staff at the Algerian centre for research in astrophysics, astronomy and geophysics (CRAAG) said that the aftershocks were a normal consequence of the orignal tremor.

Thousands of people were made homeless by last week’s quake, the worst the country had suffered in 23 years. As many as 100,000 people have been living outside for the past week, due to fears that buildings might collapse.

Algerians had thought they were finished with shock and had moved on to dealing with their grief.

These emotions for many have turned into a bitter rage over the heavy loss of life, blamed on corrupt property developers, dubbed “merchants of death,” and exacerbated by a chaotic initial response to the crisis.

Hundreds are assumed to have perished as emergency services turned up late or not at all.

Many were trapped in buildings that had clearly not been quake-proofed, in violation of regulations on the books since 1980 when Algeria’s worst quake struck, killing some 3,000.—AFP