New Zealand earthquake leaves 65 dead
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New Zealand's prime minister says at least 65 people have died after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch.
John Key said the toll was expected to rise further, adding: "We may be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day."
The tremor struck at 1251 (2351 GMT on Monday), only 10km (6.2 miles) south-east of the city and at a depth of 5km (3.1 miles), causing widespread damage.
Mr Key said the emergency services were working as fast as they could to find people trapped under the rubble.
The damage is said to be far worse than after the 7.1-magnitude quake on 4 September, which left two people seriously injured but no fatalities.
Its epicentre was further away from the city and deeper underground, but still caused an estimated $3bn (¬£1.9bn) in damage.
Community 'in agony'
TV pictures of the aftermath of Tuesday's earthquake showed scores of collapsed buildings in Christchurch, on South Island.
People could be seen wandering the rubble-filled streets in distress.
The Pyne Gould Guinness building in central Christchurch suffered severe damage
Local police said there were reports of multiple fatalities, including people on two buses which had been crushed by falling buildings.
There were also reports of fires and of numerous people being trapped in collapsed buildings, they added. Officials said up to 30 people were feared still trapped inside the Pyne Gould Guinness building.
Local television showed bodies being pulled out of rubble strewn around the city centre.
Christchurch Cathedral, an iconic stone building in the centre of the city, was partly destroyed, its spire toppling into the square below.
"I was in the square right outside the cathedral - the whole front has fallen down and there were people running from there - there were people inside as well," John Gurr, a camera technician, told the Reuters news agency. "Colombo Street, the main street, is just a mess."
Radio New Zealand reported that its staff had to cling to their desks during the tremor, and that a church near its offices had collapsed.
Concrete in Victoria Square had risen at least a metre in some places and there are signs of liquefaction around the Avon river, RNZ added.
Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote When the shaking had stopped I looked out of the window, which gives a great view onto Christchurch, and there was just dust” End Quote Barry Corbett City councilman
Power and telephone lines were knocked out, and pipes burst, flooding the streets with water.
The suburbs of Lyttleton and New Brighton are reportedly "unliveable".
Grant Beedie, who was working in a factory in Sydenham, told the BBC that the damage was "massive‚Ä¶ like a warzone".
"The entire building just shook. We all just hit the ground and shut our eyes. There were loads of things flying off the shelves," he said. "There were massive machines moving about - it was scary. I was almost in tears."
Christchurch mayor Bob Parker said there was "a lot of devastation".
"We're really in a position where we are now just trying to build up a picture of the scale of this and areas of damage and trying to quantify it in some way," he told the BBC.
"We're beginning to get a feeling, from what we've got so far, that a significant number of people are injured and a significant number of people are still trapped in buildings," the mayor added.
"And as we get further into that rescue operation... clearly we're going to be presented with statistics that are going to be bleak."
Just how bleak was soon revealed by the prime minister, who said 65 people were confirmed dead and scores more were injured or missing.
"It is just a scene of utter devastation," Mr Key said. "We have to work as fast as we can to get people out of environments where they are trapped."
"This is a community that is absolutely in agony. We just need this community, as it has done before and as it will do again, to come together, to check and support one another," he added. "We will get through this. New Zealand will regroup and Christchurch will regroup."
The military has been called in to assist the rescue effort, and the government has accepted the offer of specialist help from Australia.
Civil Defence Controller David Coetzee said "significant" aftershocks should be expected. Some have been as powerful as magnitude 5.
New Zealand lies at the southern end of the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, and above an area of the Earth's crust where the Pacific Plate converges with the Indo-Australian Plate.
The country experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which only around 20 have a magnitude in excess of 5.0.
The last fatal earthquake was in 1968, when a 7.1-magnitude tremor killed three people on the South Island's western coast.
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The Piko Wholefood building in Christchurch was badly damaged by the earthquake. 
A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck the  of New Zealand at 12:51 PM local time on Tuesday (Monday 23:51 UTC). At least 75 people have been killed by collapsing buildings in central , with more feared. Mayor  said 55 bodies had been identified and there were a further 20 unidentified bodies. The spire of the iconic Anglican  has fallen and rubble is strewn throughout the central business district. Roads and carparks have cracked and lifted, and two buses are reported to be crushed under the bus exchange. Pools of mud have erupted due to burst water mains and liquefaction.  Boulders and falling cliff faces have destroyed buildings on hillside suburbs.  Fears for the safety of nearby towns Lyttelton and Akaroa are exacerbated due to communication problems.

The earthquake was centred near , at a depth of five kilometres, according to the . Unlike previous quakes in the region that caused no fatalities, Tuesday quake was shallower and closer to the central city and the damage was much worse. Condemned buildings, weakened by last year's widespread earthquakes, were destroyed. Some aftershocks have occurred in the area after the earthquake. The largest so far was a magnitude 5.6 which occurred at 7:04 p.m. February 21  (1:04:18 p.m. local time, February 22). 

Mayor Bob Parker has stated that as many as 25 major buildings in the city are destroyed. Urban Search and Rescue efforts are focussed on people trapped in the remains of Canterbury Television and Pyne Gould Corporation office buildings. The historic  in Christchurch has half collapsed, while the old Canterbury Provincial Chambers building, Piko Wholefoods, and a church on Durham Street have been destroyed.

The earthquake also caused an estimated 30 million tons of ice to break off of the Tasman Glacier forming icebergs in a lake near its foot. Tourists on boats at the time of the quake say waves of 3.5 meters swept the lake for at least 30 minutes following the event. The glacier sits on the country's west coast, approximately 120 miles (200km) from Christchurch. No injuries were reported.

Many people are trapped in damaged buildings or under rubble, but emergency services have been hampered by gridlock as motorists and pedestrians evacuated the CBD. The main hospital remains operational despite one damaged ward being closed, and three triage centres have been set up to provide medical aid. Several hundred delegates attending a medical conference in the city, the great majority from Australia, have been trapped in the city; some of these are assisting with tending to the injured.

Electricity, telephone services, and traffic lights suffered widespread outages. Orion and Telecom are attempting to assess the damage, and generators have been sent down from Auckland to replace the backup generators in the city. Civil Defence is mounting a response with all available national resources, and Cabinet is holding an emergency session. Speaking to ,   said he was "thrown quite a distance", that there were scenes of "great confusion" on the streets, and that the quake was "as violent as the one that happened on the 4th of September". The emergency telephone code, 111 was not working for the entire region of  but is apparently stable as of approx. 4 pm . Christchurch Airport is currently closed to all but emergency flights. Speaking after the earthquake, Bob Parker said at least 200 people are believed trapped under rubble, saying that New Zealand are "going to be presented with statistics that are going to be bleak".