Algerian and French rescuers with sniffer dogs searched yesterday for survivors in a collapsed apartment block after a powerful aftershock rocked and panicked quake-hit Algeria and injured more than 200 people.

　　There were conflicting reports about how many people were inside the crumpled wreckage of the 15-storey building in Reghaia, among the towns already ravaged by the quake last Wednesday that killed at least 2,218 people and injured 9,497 others.

　　Karim Tengour said his 17-year-old friend, Nassim, and five others were inside trying to recover clothes abandoned after the original quake when the magnitude-5.8 aftershock struck on Tuesday evening, bringing down the already damaged building and sowing fresh panic.

　　"Nassim was young and happy and a great soccer player. I hope God protects us," said 19-year-old Tengour, weeping as rescuers clambered over the wreckage. "We were at school together. We were always at each other's homes."

　　An Algerian Interior Ministry official, Mohamed Kendil, said three displaced residents were inside recovering belongings when the apartment block collapsed. Once the pride of Reghaia, the building had been evacuated because of da-mage sustained in the initial quake.

　　French rescue workers, who rushed to Algeria after last week's earthquake, used dogs yesterday that sniffed through the slabs of concrete and mangled metal piled into a mound as tall as a three-story house.

　　Workers with sturdy circular saws bored a hole in the wreckage to squeeze a dog into a cavity where there were thought to be airspaces that could hold survivors.

　　After last week's powerful magnitude-6.8 quake, the pillars of the building - built in the late 1950s and known in Reghaia as "the 15th" were cracked, and its ground- and first-floor walls blown out.

　　The 15th "was a symbol of the town. You could see it from 5 to 6 kilometers away. We all cried when it was destroyed," a mechanic who worked across the road said.

　　Algerian state radio said at least three people were presumed dead in the aftershock, although it was not immediately clear if they were among those thought to be inside the collapsed building.

　　The aftershock also collapsed at least one home in the quake-ravaged town of Boumerdes. In one Algiers hotel, panicked visitors ran out of the building.