Sawt Falasteen - Strong quake strikes off battered Vanuatu

The nation's most populous island, Efate, is still reeling from the 7.3-magnitude quake on Tuesday, which killed 12 people as it toppled concrete buildings in the capital of Port Vila and set off landslides.

The latest quake Sunday occurred at a depth of 40 kilometres (25 miles) and was located some 30 kilometres west of the capital.

Unlike the earlier quake, no tsunami alerts were triggered when the temblor struck at 2:30 am (1530 GMT Saturday).

Port Vila businessman Michael Thompson told AFP the quake woke up his family.

"It gave a better bit of a shake and the windows rattled a little bit, it would have caused houses to rattle," he said.

"But you know, no movement other than a few inches either way, really. Whereas the main quake, you would have had like a metre and a half movement of the property very, very rapidly and suddenly.

"I'd describe this one as one of the bigger aftershocks, and we've had a fair few of them now."

Thompson said there was no sign of further damage in his immediate vicinity.

Mobile networks remained knocked out from earlier in the week, making outside contact with Vanuatu difficult.

In addition to disrupting communications, the first quake damaged water supplies and resulted in halted operations at the capital's main shipping port.

The South Pacific nation declared a seven-day state of emergency and a night-time curfew following the first quake, and had only announced Saturday it would lift a suspension on commercial flights, in an effort to restart its vital tourism industry.

Rescuers Friday said they had expanded their search for trapped survivors to "numerous places of collapse" beyond the capital.

- Still searching -

Australia and New Zealand this week dispatched more than 100 personnel, along with rescue gear, dogs and aid supplies, to help hunt for trapped survivors and make emergency repairs.

There were "several major collapse sites where buildings are fully pancaked", Australia's rescue team leader Douglas May said in a video update on Friday.

"We're now starting to spread out to see whether there's further people trapped and further damage. And we've found numerous places of collapse east and west out of the city."

More than 1,000 people were displaced as a result of the first quake -- many now with other households or in evacuation centres, the latest UN report said, citing Vanuatu disaster management officials.

Thompson said power had been restored to his home on Saturday but said many others were still waiting.

"We're hearing a lot of the major businesses are still down, supermarkets are trying to open back up," he said.

"So this is very different to what's happened with disasters here in the past.

"Cyclones destroy everything outside, whereas earthquakes really destroy a lot of infrastructure inside the buildings."

Vanuatu, an archipelago of some 320,000 inhabitants, sits in the Pacific's quake-prone Ring of Fire.

Tourism accounts for about a third of the country's economy, according to the Australia-Pacific Islands Business Council.

P.Tamimi--SF-PST