Hopes of finding survivors amid the rubble of El Salvador's quake-ravaged rural towns dwindled today as the official death toll from the country's second earthquake in a month climbed to 274.
Guatemalan firemen and Honduran rescue workers linked with Salvadoran army units as the search for survivors shifted to isolated rural areas close to the epicenter of Tuesday's 6.6-magnitude quake.
But as night fell rescue teams turned up nothing among the collapsed walls, fallen rafters and shattered roofing tiles of the more than 15,000 destroyed or damaged homes.
Local hospitals called for fresh supplies of blood for many of the 2,432 injured.
"We hope we may still find survivors," said Salvadoran Rescue Command spokesman Mr Eduardo Rivera. "But it would be a miracle."
Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for from the January earthquake. It triggered a landslide burying whole streets of the capital city's Santa Tecla suburb under mud and made thousands homeless.