PERU:Peru's president yesterday vowed to rebuild the quake-shattered city of Pisco as his government struggled to stem looting in the wake of the disaster.
Hope diminished for rescuers searching the mountains of rubble as families affected by the quake huddled in makeshift shelters.
President Alan Garcia said the government was preparing plans to rebuild the port city, which lost 85 per cent of its houses to Wednesday's magnitude-8 quake, in which at least 540 people died.
He said the government would provide basic two-bedroomed homes that could potentially be expanded by families.
Yesterday, military trucks carrying supplies were swarmed by dozens of people in the city and survivors fought over cans of tuna and cartons of milk.
In a football stadium, more than 500 people lined up at a single truck passing out packets of crackers, sweets and toilet paper.
President Garcia vowed to re-establish order in the city "regardless of what it costs".
"Whoever tries to cause a disturbance is going to face the consequences," he said, as the government deployed an additional 1,000 soldiers to the area.
Authorities set up food distribution points in Pisco, but very little aid seemed to be arriving to the estimated 80,000 people affected by the quake.
At one end of a football field, families who had lost everything protected themselves in half a dozen makeshift shelters made of cardboard and blankets held up by wooden poles.
Aircraft that initially carried the injured to the capital Lima were now being used to ferry supplies to the victims, Mr Garcia's cabinet chief, Jorge del Castillo, said.
But a police officer keeping guard in the stadium said many trucks with food were not getting through.
He said a truck with a donation of food from the Peruvian capital had been ransacked on the highway before it could reach Pisco.
Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, would go to Peru to "bring the witness of my sentiment and the concrete aid of the Holy See".
Peru's defence minister Allan Wagner said the death toll had risen to 540, up from the previous figure of 510 provided by firefighters. Hopes of finding more survivors diminished.
At least 1,500 people were injured and Mr Garcia said at least 80,000 people had suffered the quake's impact through the loss of loved ones or destroyed or damaged houses.
The earthquake's destruction was centred in Peru's southern desert, the oasis city of Ica and Pisco, about 125 miles southeast of Lima.
It also damaged some of the country's natural wonders.
In the Paracas National Reserve, a wildlife sanctuary on the coast near Pisco, a rock monument known as "The Cathedral" was severely damaged when a chunk of the formation that juts out into the Pacific ocean was snapped off during the earthquake.