By Mohamed Arezki Himeur BBC, Algiers

I was out with some friends eating sardines in a bar-restaurant when the earthquake hit.

Many Algerians have spent two nights in the open

My friend Mahmoud was the first to jump up from his stool.

Then everyone rushed for the door. The earth was shaking beneath our feet.

The buildings made a deafening sound as they rocked from side to side.

They were shaking like sheets of paper.

Transfixed

We got out into the middle of the street. I slipped under a parked car to avoid the lumps of concrete and pieces of glass which were falling from the buildings.

Next to me under the car, a young man was bleeding after being hit by a stone or a piece of glass.

There were so many wounded, we couldn't count them Doctor in Boumerdes Eyewitness accounts

My friends covered their heads with their hands.

They had stayed in the middle of the road. They didn't know what to do.

We were all transfixed.

Everyone started rushing out of the buildings and shops.

Women and children were shouting. Drivers abandoned their cars and started running, without knowing where they were going.

Total darkness

I ran to my house just 500 metres away, but my wife wasn't there.

She had left with my daughter.

More pictures

Along with hundreds of other people, they had fled to a park 200 metres from our house.

Everyone was panicking.

Men, women and children were running in all directions, trying to escape together.

The same scenes were repeated across Algiers and in all the towns and villages in the earthquake zone in northern Algeria.

The telephones and electricity were cut off.

Total darkness descended on the capital.

The few minutes of the earthquake seemed to last for a century.

They were the longest minutes of my life, of our lives.

It was the end of the world.

Did you witness the earthquake?

Use the form below to send us your accounts, some of which will be published below.

I am originally form Thenia which is the epicentre and I have been trying since yesterday evening to call home but no luck, following the news on our Algerian TV which I found useless. I just hope every one is ok back home.
Dahmane, UK

Waves from the earthquake have arrived in Ibiza and Menorca (we're due North), and have been so strong that they have damaged vessels in the harbours here.

Can't imagine what it must have been like in Algiers. Send them what help you can.
J. Roberts, Spain

It was the booming noise that first alerted us that something was wrong. However, before we had the chance to do anything the room was violently shaking. My wife took our baby and got under the dining room table. Two friends suggested we go outside. The first shock lasted two or three minutes and smashed plates in the kitchen and brought plaster and paint of the walls. There were some pretty big after shocks throughout the night. The state of many buildings is still uncertain with some having gaping cracks. We pray that there isn't another as lots of buildings in Algiers are unsafe and in disrepair. As I write we are still feeling the aftershocks.
Robert Bailey, Algiers, Algeria

I have never seen anything like it in my life and I'm not even sure if my family are still alive!
Polopy Husir, Algeria

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