Rescuers end search as Peru's quake toll edges to 540

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PISCO, Peru, Aug 20 (AFP): Rescue teams in Peru's shattered earthquake zone were heading home Monday, as search operations were replaced by stepped-up aid efforts and security patrols against looters.
Wednesday's powerful 8.0-magnitude temblor killed at least 503 people, and the final toll "could reach 540," Civil Defence officials said. Some 1,600 people were injured.
Most of the deaths occurred in the town of Pisco, 240 kilometres (150 miles) south of the capital Lima.
There, 308 people were confirmed killed -- 160 of them in the town's church, which collapsed during mass.
National police colonel Roger Torres told the news agency a further 150 were believed still buried in rubble elsewhere in Pisco, an evaluation backed by the odor of decomposing bodies hanging heavy in many streets.
President Alan Garcia, Sunday making his third visit to the town, raged against the looting and assaults reported in several affected areas and said he would restore order "whatever the cost".
"I have ordered to use the harshest measures and if needed to impose a curfew," he told reporters.
More than 1,000 troops and police armed with assault rifles were patrolling the streets of Pisco, 70 percent of which was destroyed.
As security forces were reinforced, teams involved in search and rescue were packing up and going home. Any hope of finding more survivors was now extinguished.
"The possibility of finding someone alive is nearly nil," Jorge Molina, search and rescue operations chief for the local firefighters, told the news agency.