State radio in Algeria is reporting that at least four people have been killed, including three children, and 67 people hurt when an earthquake measuring 5.8 hit the country's north-eastern region. The tremor on Monday evening (local time) is said to have triggered the collapse of about 30 buildings in and around the village of Laalam in the province of Bejaia, 300 kilometres east of the capital Algiers. The dead children were aged five, nine, and 13. It is the deadliest tremor to have struck the earthquake-prone North African country since a 2003 quake in Boumerdes killed 2,300 people, injured more than 10,000 and made at least 100,000 homeless. An investigation into the Boumerdes quake found serious faults in the construction of houses, apartment blocks and high-rise buildings which collapsed. Authorities have since tightened construction rules.
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