Inhabitants called the Koryakiya region's administration on a satellite phone to report that "the villages are practically entirely destroyed, even brick stoves fell apart," officials said, adding that rescuers flown in by helicopter were assessing the situation.

Up to 180 people were evacuated Saturday from the villages of Korf and Tilichiki, including more than 70 children and seven pregnant women, the region's chief federal inspector, Vladimir Ilyukhin, said as quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

A total of some 300 people asked for a chance to leave their villages, mostly children, the sick, invalids and the elderly, Ilyukhin said, while ruling out a total evacuation of the villages' 4,000-strong population.

The temblor measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale struck at 1114 GMT, at a depth of 40 kilometers (25 miles). It was located in Koryakiya, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Il'pyrskiy and 6,300 kilometers (3,910 miles) north-northeast of Moscow.

The quake was the third that rocked the peninsula on Friday, according to the Kamchatka seismological service, the first measuring a massive 7.9 degrees and the second 6.2. Thousands of people in Koryakiya, a sparsely populated district, were affected by the earlier quakes, but only four required medical attention, with about 50 more believed to have only minor injuries, the emergency situations ministry said.

The Kamchatka peninsula, which is roughly the same size as Japan, is one of Russia's wildest regions, known for hot springs, 29 active volcanos and a large population of brown bears.

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