The death toll in Gautemala's quake has risen to 50. Nearly one hundred people are still missing. The earthquake, which measured 7.4 on the Richter Scale hit off its Pacific coast last evening. In the town of San Cristobal Cucho, ten members of one family died when their house collapsed on top of them. At a nearby sand query, rescuers are using diggers, to search for workers buried in a landslide. Officials said landslides have buried roads and it will take 24 hours to restore links to the quake-hit area. President Otto Perez Molina has declared a national alert and advised people to evacuate tall buildings as a precaution. The US Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said, in a statement, there is no threat of a destructive widespread tsunami.

The director of Guatemala's Seismological Institute, Eddy Sanchez, said it has been the biggest tremor in Guatemala since 1976, when 25,000 people died in 7.5-magnitude quake. There have been dozens of aftershocks to yesterday's quake, four of them over a magnitude of 5.