Pisco (Peru), Aug. 17 (Reuters): A powerful aftershock rattled Peru today, sowing panic as rescue teams and volunteers scrambled to find survivors of a massive earthquake earlier this week that killed about 500 people.

The aftershock had a 5.9 magnitude and damaged some homes in the region of Huancavelica, which lies south of the capital Lima and is one of Peru’s most impoverished areas.

No one was killed but the aftershock terrified some residents of the towns hit hardest by Wednesday’s 8.0 magnitude earthquake. In Pisco, people standing in long lines for food and water scattered when the ground started shaking.

Many of the victims of Wednesday’s earthquake were poor, killed when their flimsy mud-brick homes collapsed. Hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed.

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