After the first disaster teams reached hard-hit Western and Choiseul Provinces, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said aerial patrols had reported "massive and widespread" destruction from Monday's magnitude 8.0 quake and tsunami.

Aerial pictures showed flattened homes and twisted iron roofs on the ground all along the remote coastline as people wandered seemingly aimlessly on roads clogged by debris and boats hurled ashore by powerful waves up to 10 meters high.

The first priority of rescue teams, Sogavare said, would be to restore communications with affected areas amid official estimates that 22 people had been killed and 5,409 left homeless. The death toll was expected to rise.

Australian aid agency Caritas said infection would set in quickly among those injured, with antibiotics in short supply and doctors currently tending to survivors at a hilltop aid station near Gizo, the worst affected town.

With a state of emergency in force, a police patrol boat carrying food and emergency supplies arrived in Gizo, where schools and a hospital were damaged, and dozens of houses sucked into the sea. At least 13 villages were feared destroyed.

The region around Gizo is popular with international tourists and scuba divers for its corals. A New Zealand resident was among the dead, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said.

Quake jolts Afghanistan

In another part of the world, a strong earthquake struck the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan Tuesday, with tremors felt across Pakistan and India, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck 260 km northeast of Kabul, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and officials at Pakistan's meteorological department said.

Authorities in Faizabad, the capital of Afghanistan's Badakhshan province and the town nearest the epicenter, were trying to contact outlying districts to assess damage and casualties, Deputy Governor Shams-Urahman said.

(China Daily via agencies April 4, 2007)