PISCO, Peru (AFP) - Armed troops patrolled the streets here to ward off looters as rescue workers abandoned the search for survivors to focus on aid efforts for tens of thousands left destitute by the Peru earthquake.
President Alan Garcia has threatened to impose a curfew to stop looting by angry mobs, with 200,000 people said to have been affected by Wednesday's 8.0 magnitude quake which left 500 dead and 1,600 injured.
"I have ordered to use the harshest measures and if needed to impose a curfew," Garcia told reporters in Pisco, the town, 240 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of Lima, hit hardest by the quake.
More than 1,000 troops and police armed with assault rifles were patrolling the streets of the town which was 70 percent destroyed in the quake, the largest to rock Peru in decades.
Amid mounting reports of looting and assaults, Garcia on Saturday ordered more troops to the quake-stricken southern area and promised that authorities would keep the peace "whatever the cost."
Many thousands were left homeless by the quake and yesterday faced a fifth night sleeping in the streets in the chilly southern hemisphere winter.
Emergency workers meanwhile abandoned rescue efforts as hopes for finding any more survivors faded. "The possibility of finding someone alive is nearly nil," Jorge Molina, search and rescue operations chief for the local firefighters, told AFP.
Efforts would now focus on recovering the dead in the rubble and helping secure the distribution of aid, officials said.
Emergency workers rescued only two survivors and found 148 bodies from the ruins of the San Clemente church in the town, which collapsed when the tremor hit during a funeral mass, Molina said.
Desperate mobs have been looting trucks carrying food and water, and some people tried to break into the air force base where relief efforts have been centralized.
Hours later, close to the provincial capital of Ica, another mob tried to raid a convoy of trucks carrying emergency supplies.
In nearby Chincha, a group of people tried to break into a hospital believing it held emergency food supplies, hospital director Jorge Barrera told AFP.
President Garcia tried to play down reports of looting as nothing more than "rumors". But an RPP radio reporter in Chincha broke down in tears describing the prevailing lawlessness in the city, which he said had been left at the mercy of gangs of armed thugs.
Spanish firefighters searching the rubble of the Pisco church with trained sniffer dogs also had to stop their work late Saturday when gunfire broke out around them, although it remained unclear where it was coming from.
Aid workers are also worried of the risk of an outbreak of disease in the town.
Health Minister Carlos Vallejos said some 1,500 doctors and nurses were struggling to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases among earthquake victims.
"The problem is not only that there are still unfound bodies, the problem is water," and how human waste is being disposed of, he said.
There were fears of an outbreak of infectious diseases in the quake-stricken areas such as diarrhea and cholera, while a choking dust from the rubble of the town was causing respiratory problems.
Medical officials said Saturday that symptoms of respiratory infections have begun to emerge as a floating dust cloaks the town and warned the situation could deteriorate into an epidemic if residents fail to take precautions.
A field hospital has already been set by 22 US doctors in the grounds of the Pisco football stadium.