Scores dead, missing in El Salvador after earthquake

Landslide destroys neighborhood

The quake also rocked Honduras and Guatemala, where two deaths were reported, while buildings swayed in Mexico City, about 600 miles (965 kilometers) to the northwest.

Hundreds of rescuers frantically ripped at the earth with sticks and bare hands to reach those buried in Las Colinas.

A distraught Arturo Magana, 25, wandered about trying to find his brother, Jaime, 18. "I don't know where to dig because I don't know where the house is," he said.

Carmen de Marin, a 41-year-old woman, wept beside the buried ruins of her house at Las Colinas. "There is my boy! Help me! Help me!" she wailed.

She said her 12-year-old son Jaime Ernesto Marin had stayed home to await a phone call from his father in the United States when she went out shopping shortly before the quake hit at about 11:35 a.m. (1735 GMT.)

One dead in church collapse

Lopez, of the Red Cross, estimated that 300 houses had been destroyed in Las Colinas. The wall of a hospital collapsed in the southeastern town of San Miguel and 25 people were known to be dead in a small village nearby.

In Santa Ana, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) northwest of the capital, the 116-year-old El Calvario church collapsed, killing at least one employee and possibly others worshipping inside, according to the Rev. Robert Castro.

Castro said the church is usually empty at the time when the quake occurred. "We can only hope now that there weren't people inside," he said.

The quake killed at least six people in the working-class town of about 200,000 people. Dozens of wooden- and concrete-framed houses collapsed.

The Red Cross reported that 13 people died in nearby Sosonati. Some 200 other victims were rushed to the area hospital, which authorities weren't sure was still structurally sound.

It took more than an hour for some San Salvador radio stations to return to the air and telephone service remained spotty at mid-afternoon. There were cracked buildings and shattered windows across the city of 500,000.

15 aftershocks reported

Officials at San Salvador's international airport said all flights had been halted, and most businesses in the city also were closed.

Police in neighboring Guatemala said a man and a 2-year-old girl were killed and three other people were injured when a pair of homes collapsed in the city of Jalpataua.

Local radio stations reported the collapse of a church in Suchitepequez, in southern Guatemala.

The quake set off car alarms and temporarily knocked out electricity, radio, television and cellular phone service all over Guatemala, but most service was quickly restored.

Journalist Martin Asturias told CNN that 15 aftershocks had been reported in Guatamala.

The USGS could not confirm reports of more than one seismic occurrence in the region, but was investigating. The spokesman for the USGS confirmed to CNN that a tsunami warning had been issued for Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Asturias said the situation in Guatemala City was "under control," but said it had been chaotic earlier. "I just basically turned around and looked at a telephone pole that was hanging outside my window, and I saw it shaking back and forth. At that moment I got up and got out of the house. When I got out of my house, everybody in my neighborhood was standing on the street... pretty nervous and pretty panicked," he recounted.

Honduran officials reported cracked buildings in several cities, but there were no reports of injuries.

A 1986 earthquake centered near San Salvador killed an estimated 1,500 people and injured 8,000.