KOBE, Japan -- The Japanese nightmare of a devastating urban earthquake came true Tuesday when a powerful temblor tore through western cities, killing more than 1,712 people, injuring thousands and wreaking spectacular devastation.


Rescuers dug desperately through the night and into the early hours of Wednesday, searching for survivors among the hundreds of people trapped in the rubble of Japan's worst earthquake in decades.


The death toll continued to climb. By early Wednesday -- nearly 24 hours after the quake shattered this western port city -- 1,712 dead had been counted, national police said. Another 988 people were missing and 6,334 hurt.


About 100,000 people spent the night in shelters in Kobe, where the quake toppled hundreds of buildings, touched off raging fires, collapsed roadways and knocked trains off their tracks.


Authorities were working frantically to restore vital services: telephones, power and transportation.


There were dramatic scenes of people awaiting rescue. In television footage from Osaka, the face of a woman was visible in the rubble. "I've been sitting in a small space here," she cried out in a feeble voice. "But my mother has bad legs, and can't last much longer."


Throughout the night, the sky was lit with the eerie orange glow of dozens of fires. Officials told Kyodo News Service that one blaze was near a gas station. At another, firemen stood by helplessly because the quake had cut water supplies.


Many areas had a strong smell of leaking gas.


Tetsuro Shiyomi of Kansai Electric Power Co. said no nuclear plants were damaged by the quake. His company's 11 nuclear plants are in Fukui, about 140 kilometers to the northeast.


Just outside Kobe, damage seemed to be capricious -- an intact showroom window at an auto dealership next to four collapsed wooden houses. In the city, rubble was everywhere. A five-story building had fallen on its side, and a bank building of about seven stories leaned out over the sidewalk.


Roads into Kobe were jammed, mostly with ordinary cars, apparently people trying to get home or to check on relatives. Ambulances and fire trucks also were stuck in the traffic.


Rescuers from all over Japan converged on the quake zone, as other nations including Russia and the United States pledged to send help. The Japanese military sent in 1,000 troops and put more on standby. The Japan Red Cross said it was gathering doctors and nurses from across the country.


U.S. President Bill Clinton, commemorating the one-year anniversary of California's killer earthquake, Tuesday ordered a high-level delegation to Japan to help Tokyo cope with the "extraordinary fury" of the quake.


In Kobe, an old woman wearing a bloodstained bandage looked drained of emotion and broken by strain. "My family was crushed underneath the house," she told Japanese TV, speaking in a toneless voice.


One middle-aged man refused to come indoors.


"I don't want to go inside a buildings," he said, shivering. "It's cold, but I would rather stay outside than in a building that may collapse on top of me."


The quake, which struck before dawn Tuesday, was centered 20 kilometers under Awaji in the Inland Sea, the Central Meteorological Agency said.


The government, meanwhile, was coming under criticism over the slowness of rescue efforts and the lack of better quake damage prevention.


"I think rescue measures have been very slow," said Tokyo University professor Osamu Koide. "I think there was a lack of quake-preventive knowledge."


Critics were also asking why so many buildings and elevated roads fell down. Japan has long boasted about the sophistication of its earthquake engineering. "We used to believe that Japanese roads and houses were built well so what had happened in California won't happen here," said Suminao Murakami, a Yokohama National University professor. "That was wrong."


Kobe, a city of 1.4 million, had not previously been considered a major center of seismic activity.


More aftershocks shook the region early Wednesday, and more were predicted for the coming week.