Rescuers and aid workers in Indonesia say there is little hope of finding anyone else alive in the ruins of Padang which bore the brunt Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude earthquake.
The deputy team leader of the UN Disaster Assessment Coordination said the search and rescue operation is expected to end in the next couple of days.
While aid and international rescue teams have poured into Padang, a port city of 900,000, help has been slow to reach remoter inland areas, with landslides cutting many roads.
When rescuers arrived they found entire villages obliterated by landslides and homeless survivors desperate for food, water and shelter.
Health officials said five villages had been buried in torrents of mud and rock torn out of the lush green hills by the force of the quake.
People dug at the landslide sites with wooden hoes, but the chances of finding anyone alive beneath the wet, compacted red earth appeared hopeless.
For the survivors, aid was still urgently needed.
Indonesia's health minister Siti Fadilah Supari said the government estimated the death toll could reach 3,000, adding that disease was becoming a concern, especially in Padang city, where a pervading stench of decomposing bodies hangs over the ruined buildings.
Workers were due to begin spraying the wreckage with disinfectant, while at a public cemetery in Padang a pit had been dug where 11 unidentified bodies retrieved from the ruined Ambacang Hotel were due to be buried.
The hotel, a Dutch colonial-era landmark, had been the focus of a huge rescue operation today involving international teams with sniffer dogs, but no-one was found alive.
Indonesia's disaster agency said 20,000 buildings had been damaged in the quake, with most government offices destroyed.
