The quake came less than a week after a more powerful earthquake killed more than 2,200 people in the northeast of the country. Several buildings in the town of Zemmouri east of Algiers have collapsed in the quake, injuring residents, a doctor in the town told local radio.

Seismological authorities in Strasbourg, France, said the quake measured 5.5 on the open-ended Richter scale. Algerian state radio said earlier that it had a 5.8 magnitude. Massive relief operations were still in full swing across the afflicted area although international rescue teams had been preparing to head home in the coming days. Algerian state radio was broadcasting brief appeals for calm in between songs, as the sirens of emergency service vehicles could be heard on the streets, fighting through the heavy rush-hour traffic.

In the capital Algiers, people thronged out into the streets after the quake struck, as hundreds of buildings that were damaged in the earlier quake threatened to collapse.

International phone lines remained open but were flooded with calls, unlike last week when the jolt snapped underwater phone cables connecting Algeria with Europe. Scores of aftershocks have struck Algeria since the first quake hit on May 21 with a force of 6.8 on the Richter scale, killing at least 2,218 people and injuring almost 9,500.

Although official figures put the number of homeless at about 10,000, the Algerian Red Crescent has estimated the figure at closer to 100,000 as many people were afraid to return to their homes.

Meanwhile, suspected extremists killed 14 members of two families in western Algeria on Monday, including two children whose throats they slit, authorities said yesterday. The families were killed when their homes were attacked on Monday night in Tadjna in the western province of Chlef, some 200 km west of the capital Algiers. Seven people were killed in the same area a day earlier.

Hospital sources said earlier that the 14 victims belonged to a single family. State radio said government troops were searching the Mediterranean region for the killers. The hard-line Armed Islamic Group (GIA) is known to operate in the Chlef region and has in the past staged attacks there. Between 100,000 and 150,000 Algerians have been killed in the brutal violence that erupted in 1992 after the government cancelled elections that Islamists were poised to win.