"These are very, very dark days for New Zealand," Prime Minister John Key said, adding that rescue crews refused to give up hope people remained alive in the debris three days after Tuesday's 6.3 magnitude quake. "We need a bit a bit of luck to try and find a few people that may still have survived this earthquake and are still trapped in those buildings," he told Radio New Zealand.

Police said 113 bodies had been retrieved from the rubble and were lying in a temporary morgue, without updating the figure of 228 listed as missing.

"There have been no rescues overnight, the body count continues to rise," Superintendent Russell Gibson told TVNZ.

Rescuers have ruled out finding survivors at Christchurch's landmark cathedral, which lost its spire and where up to 22 people could be buried. They also do not believe anyone remains alive under the collapsed CTV building, which housed a TV station and a busy language school for foreign students, and where as many as 120 people may have perished.

AFP