The Latest: Tributes to nun killed in Ecuador earthquake

A Roman Catholic religious order says Sister Clare Theresa Crockett was leading a group of young trainee nuns to safety at a school where she worked when a stairwell collapsed.

The order of the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother said Crockett and other nuns had been working to help residents hit by heavy local flooding when the earthquake struck on Saturday.

Ecuador's foreign minister says more international rescuers are heading to the country's disaster zone of flattened buildings to help in the race against time to find survivors from a powerful magnitude-7.8 earthquake

Complicating rescue efforts is the lack of electricity in many areas, meaning noisy power generators must be used, making it harder to hear people who might be trapped beneath rubble.