Rescuers hold out hope for survivors of Albanian quake

Earthquake rescue teams in Albania clung to hope Thursday of finding missing people in "survival pockets" rubble, as the death toll rose to 46 with some entire families found dead beneath their crumbled homes.

The 6.4 magnitude quake, the deadliest in decades, tore down buildings near the Adriatic coast while people were sleeping just before 4:00 am (0300 GMT) on Tuesday.

Experts from around Europe have arrived to help shovel away slabs of collapsed apartments and search beneath the wreckage with dogs and specialised cameras.

In the hard-hit coastal city of Durres, Italian rescue workers on Thursday unearthed the corpses of a mother and three children lying in a bed together beneath the ruins of their flattened home, a witness at the scene told AFP.

Only one member of the Lala family who lived there, a young man rescued on Tuesday, has been pulled out alive.

Four other relatives were earlier found dead at the site of the shattered four-storey building.

Nearby on the perimeter of a toppled beach-side hotel, a distraught relative fainted in the afternoon as he watched rescue workers carry out a man's body in a yellow bag.

Yet tireless rescuers kept hopes alive for survival stories.

"There may be hope for up to eight or ten days" for victims to live after an earthquake, Captain Joel Leroy, a French rescuer, told AFP.

His team of around 50 was trying to track down those believed to be trapped inside a seven-storey building in Durres whose first two floors had collapsed into the ground.

Victims may still be alive in "survival pockets" of air that allow them to breathe under the rubble, he said. "That's why we are working so hard, we believe in it."