AN earthquake has killed at least 160 people and destroyed hundreds of homes in south-west Pakistan.

A second strong quake struck 12 hours later, but there were no immediate reports of more damage or casualties.

The death toll was expected to rise as reports arrived from remote areas of the affected Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan.

The quake struck two hours before dawn. It was centred 35 miles from the provincial capital, Quetta, and had a preliminary magnitude of 6.4, the US Geological Survey reported .

Pakistan's meteorological department said there were two tremors, the second bigger than the first.

A string of around 18 aftershocks followed, and the second quake had a magnitude of 6.2.

The worst-hit area was Ziarat, where around 2,000 mostly mud and timber houses in five villages were destroyed.

The local mayor, Dilawar Khan Kakar, said hundreds of people were injured and 15,000 left homeless. Some homes were buried in a landslide triggered by the quake.

Rescuers had pulled 160 bodies from the rubble in the Ziarat valley area, one of Baluchistan's most popular tourist spots, he told Reuters.

"There is great destruction. Not a single house is intact," he said in an interview with Express News television.

"I would like to appeal to the whole world for help. We need food, we need medicine. People need warm clothes, blankets, because it is cold here."

In Wam, one of the worst-hit villages, Mohammad Aleem, whose two brothers and a sister-in-law died, was clawing through rubble to look for other relatives.

"I don't know who's survived and who's died," he told Reuters. "I'm still searching."

Rescue worker Abdul Rahim Ziyawal said the village had been "flattened".

Khadija, a 50-year-old woman, described feeling two jolts. "The first was mild, but I made my family get out ... then the roof of my house caved in with the strong one," she told Reuters.

Emergency workers were trying to reach places high in the mountains above the valley, where many people are believed to be trapped under debris.

Sohail-ur-Rehman, another senior official, said authorities were attempting to bury the dead as quickly as possible to prevent outbreaks of disease.

"Graves are being dug with excavators ... we can't keep dead bodies in the open," he told Reuters.

Quetta, located about 1,500 kilometers southwest of Islamabad, is the capital of Baluchistan, the country's biggest province by area and smallest by population. The city was leveled in 1935 by a magnitude-7.6 quake that left about 30,000 people dead, according to the USGS Web site.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are located in a zone where the Eurasian, Arabian and Indo-Australian tectonic plates meet and rub together, sometimes producing earthquakes. More than 86,000 people were killed in northern Pakistan when a magnitude-7.6 quake hit in October 2005.

Source: The Guardian