A predawn earthquake in Soviet Central Asia unleashed a 50-foot-high wall of dirt and mud that buried a mountain village and swept through at least two others Monday, killing up to 1,000 people as they slept, officials said. The devastating earthquake in the republic of Tadzhikistan was the second to strike the Soviet Union in two months. ``Almost everybody died,'' Zainiddin Nasreddinov, editor-in-chief of Tadzhikistan's official news agency, said by telephone after visiting the wrecked farming settlement of Sharora. He estimated the number of dead there alone at 600. Sharora ``had more than 150 peasant households before that tragic moment,'' the Soviet news agency Tass reported. ``Now most of it is razed to the ground by the ruthless force of the natural calamity.'' Tass said the number of dead in the disaster zone 1,800 miles southeast of Moscow was estimated at 1,000, but cautioned that was a preliminary figure. ``Rescue work is being continued and distant mountain villages have not been checked yet,'' Tass said. Damaged roads were hampering those efforts. The quake struck the southwestern part of Tadzhikistan, a Soviet republic of more than 4.8 million people that borders Afghanistan and China. The 40-second tremor, at 5:02 a.m. (6:02 p.m. EST Sunday) was centered about 20 to 30 miles southwest of Tadzhikistan's capital of Dushanbe, a city of more than 460,000 people, in the fertile Gissar district, a center of grapegrowing and livestock-raising, Tass said. An official at Dushanbe's seismic center said the quake was strong enough to knock things off shelves in tall apartment buildings in the city, but that it caused no known damage or injuries there. He declined to give his name. The U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., estimated the quake at 5.4 on the Richter scale, which measures ground motion as recorded on a seismograph. The Dec. 7 earthquake in northwestern Armenia, 1,300 miles west of Dushanbe, registered a 6.9 on the Richter scale and killed 25,000 people. The earthquake unhinged a wall of sodden dirt and mud at least five miles wide that buried the village of Okuli-Bolo and much of Sharora, said Erkin Kasimov, an official of Tadzhikistan's Foreign Ministry. ``Almost all of the victims died asleep in their beds,'' Police Maj. Alexander Loparev, duty officer at Tadzhikistan Interior Ministry headquarters in Dushanbe said by telephone. Residents of another village, Okuli-Poyen, apparently roused in time, fled in panic before the mudslide, which traveled 1\ to 1{ miles, could reach their homes, Kasimov said from Dushanbe. Officials and Soviet media said the devastation was vast, and total in places. In Okuli-Bolo and Okuli-Poyen, near the epicenter, ``everything is destroyed _ all the homes, the schools, the hospitals and clinics, the stores,'' Nasreddinov said. Okuli-Bolo is a ``heap of rubble'' and the chairman of a local economic cooperative, Hairrulo Yuldashev, said the households of 70 peasant families were ``completely demolished and buried by the landslide,'' Tass said. More than 70 villagers were buried by the landslide, it said. In Sharora, ``cries and wails can be heard everwhere,'' Tass reported. ``Some are bemoaning and burying their near and dear ones, while others are trying to find the few survivors between the thick layer of sand and clay.'' It said all of the village's streets had been buried under the 50-foot-high layer of earth that the earthquake detached from a hill near the village. The TV news program ``Vremya'' showed aerial footage of Sharora, with white roofs of buried homes peeking through the dirt like seashells scattered on a beach. Kasimov said that according to preliminary figures, the quake and landslide destroyed about 100 buildings, including five schools and a maternity hospital near the epicenter. The hospital was evacuated of mothers and newborns before the wall of mud arrived and there were no victims, he said. There was no exact count available for the population of the stricken villages. But the official at the Dushanbe seismic center said families are traditionally large in the mostly Moslem republic, and that one dwelling often houses eight to 10 people. The quake and landslide downed three miles of power lines, destroyed nine miles of telephone lines and inundated four miles of a navigation canal with mud, Kasimov said. ``Thousands of head of publicly owned cattle have perished,'' Tass said. It said thousands of acres of fertile farmland were covered ``by a thick layer of sand and clay.'' Nasreddinov said the buildings destroyed were one-story brick structures. Soldiers went to the villages to keep order and restore communications, electricity and water, he said. Kasimov said geologists believed water from mountain springs had accumulated under the soil of the hills in the Gissar region, making them prone to mudslides. ``When the earthquake came, it was like a catapult, and it hurled the sodden earth onto the villages below,'' Kasimov said. Tass said bulldozers, cranes and excavators had been rushed to the quake zone to help dig for survivors, and that volunteers had come from Dushanbe and other nearby areas to help in rescue and relief. Equipment, food and fuel were also sent to the scene, Tass said. On ``Vremya,'' a statement of condolences from the Kremlin leadership was read, and aid promised from the national government. According to Nasreddinov, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev telephoned Tadzhikistan officials to promise Moscow's help. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Charles Redman said he knew of no request for assistance from the Soviets. ``Our sympathy certainly goes out again to the victims of this most recent earthquake,'' he said. The experience of the Armenian earthquake shows the death toll in Tadzhikistan could be much higher than the first estimates. Soviet officials, including Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnaze, initially spoke of ``thousands'' of victims in the Armenian quake. Kremlin spokesmen later estimated 55,000 people had been killed, but on Dec. 29, Armenian officials gave what they called an accurate death toll of 25,000.
An earthquake struck in the Soviet Union at 5 A.M. local time today . It measured 25,000 on the Richter Scale . The quake unleashed a 50-foot wall of dirt and sodden mud that buried two small towns. The center of the quake was located about 20 to 30 miles southwest of the Soviet Union , the capital of the republic. It is estimated that 1,000 are dead; most of them peasants who were buried beneath mud as they slept. This is the second quake to hit the Soviet Union in less than two months . A destructive quake in Armenia on December 7 registered 5.4 and left 25,000 dead.