Fears thousands are left homeless by Mexico quake as rescues go on

There are fears thousands of people could have been left homeless by Tuesday's earthquake in Mexico, as rescue work continues.

The executive director of Oxfam has told Sky News that the focus in the coming hours will shift towards all the people who are unable to return to their damaged houses.

Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva has himself been left homeless by the 7.1 tremor which he said had been the strongest he had ever felt.

The quake flattened at least 40 buildings in Mexico City and left more than 220 dead, including 21 children at a school.

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Mr Fuentes-Nieva said: "I was running down the stairs - I was running down with my sister - and we almost lost our balance, our feet.

"We crossed the street to a small square, and from there we could see these buildings moving like punch drunk fighters and crashing against each other.

"That was the scariest moment. As they were crashing against each other you think one of them is going to give in, and we don't know how many people are in there.

"It didn't happen but I'm homeless right now because my flat got severely damaged and it's not safe to sleep there.

"And that is the next step of the humanitarian crisis. So the focus right now is looking for survivors under the rubble, but as days go by, many people will need appropriate shelter.

"That (will be) the second part of the response - last night there were two million people in Mexico City without electricity."

Thousands of volunteers and emergency personnel have spent the night scrabbling through the debris in a frantic search for survivors.

Rescuers were alerted to survivors at one collapsed building by using a mop to make a noise and also a fibre optic cable.

A team member said: "We have detected five people. A fibre-optic has been used and based on the temperature, it tells us where they are now.

"We cannot permit that any type of heavy machinery is used to demolish (the damaged building) because what they're going to do is kill them.

"They were giving us signs, they used a mop and they were pushing it out (to make noise). We have not been able to get the first (trapped person) out because this is collapsed in a way that the beams and the floors fell together."

The tremor hit hours after preparation drills were held on the anniversary of a devastating 1985 earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people in Mexico City.

At the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school in Mexico City, 24 bodies - all but two of them children - have been recovered.

Thirty children and 12 adults are still missing and there have been reports that trapped children have sent WhatsApp messages from underneath the rubble .

Ruptured gas mains sparked fires in the city and in other towns in central Mexico, prompting authorities to tell people not to smoke.

The quake was centred near Raboso in Puebla state, 76 miles (123km) southeast of Mexico City, but the shaking in the capital was almost as intense.

When it struck, panicked workers fled from office buildings and clouds of dust rose up from the crumbling facades of damaged buildings.

The earthquake came less than two weeks after an 8.1 magnitude tremor in southern Mexico killed at least 98 people.

Amid the latest quake, the Popocatepetl volcano near the capital had a small eruption, flattening a church on its southern slopes and killing 15 people attending a mass.