Whole villages in Indonesia's quake zone were found obliterated by landslides, while rescuers searched desperately for up to 4,000 people believed to be still trapped in rubble.

The full extent of the damage from Wednesday's 7.6-magnitude earthquake emerged as attention turned to the hundreds of villages in the hills outside Padang, a devastated city of one million at the centre of rescue efforts.

indonesia padang earthquake sumatra AFP journalists travelling from the coastal city on Sumatra island to the surrounding mountains encountered dozens of crumbled houses on the steep roads, and then four villages buried entirely by landslides.

A search-and-rescue officer from the local government said that up to 400 people could have perished in the four hillside villages alone.

"The difficulty in this rescue operation is that the houses are buried under the soil as much as four metres deep," the officer named Topan told AFP . "So far we have been using our hands to dig up the soil."

One body was seen lying in a stream nearby, but Topan said he expected to find many more. A 100-strong rescue team arrived on the scene but was unable to bring in heavy machinery because of the broken, narrow roads.

Bob McKerrow, head of the Indonesia delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, said aerial photos showed the extent of the damage in the mountainous outlying regions.

indonesia padang earthquake sumatra He said hundreds of villages were in the disaster zone, and that the few he had visited had all reported deaths and serious injuries.

"Typically in every village, there's an old woman with a broken back with a gash on her arm and she's not moving. That's why we're sending in helicopters with medical teams," he said.

In Padang, where hardly a single building has been left undamaged, rescuers were racing against time to haul any survivors from schools, hotels and homes that have been reduced to tangles of concrete and rubble.

indonesian earthquake in padang sumatra Hope was raised at the ruined Ambacang hotel, where an estimated 100 people are believed to have been buried, when police said they had received an SMS test message from a person inside saying there were eight survivors.

"I think there could still be survivors," said Yoshiaki Shimazu, the leader of a specialist team from Japan with rescue dogs at the scene. "The way the building fell, there could be voids."

David Lange, a worker for the SurfAid medical organisation, said he fled the building just as it caved in. After cheating death, he came to the aid of a woman in labour who was stuck in chaotic traffic.

He successfully delivered her baby on the front seat of the vehicle.

"I just can't believe I'm alive. The people right behind me didn't make it out, the blocks from the hotel were falling all around me," he said in a message to colleages passed to AFP, adding that many westerners remained inside.

Sniffer dogs and infra-red equipment

Foreign rescue teams with sniffer dogs and infra-red equipment were being deployed all over Padang to help overwhelmed and underequipped Indonesian emergency crews.

indonesian earthquake in padang sumatra "We estimate about 3,000 to 4,000 people are still trapped or buried under the rubble," said UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Indonesia El-Mostafa Benlamlih.

The United Nations has said that at least 1,100 people have died in the disaster while the government toll, which has not been revised since Thursday, stands at 777 but it has said it expects the figure to go much higher.

"I think the death toll is going to rise dramatically, the current figure is going to be very low from listening to people working at the scene. There will certainly be more than 2,000," McKerrow said.

Indonesia appealed for foreign aid Friday as the stench of decomposing bodies indicated that many trapped in the wreckage have already perished.

Experts said that with specialised crews now arriving, there was some chance of still finding survivors providing their injuries were not too serious.

indonesia padang earthquake sumatra One lucky survivor was 20-year-old Ratna Kurnia Sari, who was pulled limp and covered in dust from the ruins of a college on Friday after spending 48 hours buried beneath rubble. Facts: Earthquake pointers

"I was telling myself 'I must survive, I've got to see my 14-month-old boy grow up. I want to see him get big and become a good person,'" she told AFP from hospital.

The quake struck off Sumatra's west coast northwest of Padang on Wednesday, on a major fault-line on the volatile "Ring of Fire" that scientists have long warned was a disaster waiting to happen.