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CONCEPCION: Thousands more troops deployed across Chile as armed vigilantes patrolled neighborhoods to ward off looters and protect residents already traumatized by a devastating earthquake.

"The thugs have taken over the city. Now we are not afraid of the earthquakes, we're afraid of the criminals," Marcelo Rivera, the mayor of Hualpen, told a Chilean radio station.

President Michelle Bachelet doubled the number of troops patrolling the worst-hit areas to 14,000, as people in the second largest city of Concepcion were slapped with an 18-hour curfew.

"Military personnel will be present in the streets of Concepcion until midday to maintain public order, and they will not waver in carrying out their duties," warned General Guillermo Ramirez.

A similar curfew was also imposed on three other towns badly damaged by Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake, which was so strong it triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami and according to a NASA scientist probably shifted the Earth's axis.

Bachelet defended her government's handling of the crisis as the first aid supplies began trickling into the quake-hit areas.

"We understand your urgent suffering, but we also know that these are criminal acts that will not be tolerated," Bachelet said.

Bachelet said troops now had fanned out with water and food in the hard-hit Maule and Bio Bio river regions, where destruction was vast and looting rampant after Saturday's temblor, one of the worst on record.

Officially, the quake killed almost 800 people, but the death toll looks set to rise sharply as relief teams reach more isolated areas.

"The tsunami affected 200 kilometers of coastline, at places sweeping 2,000 meters inland," General Bosco Pesse, who is running emergency operations in the Maule region of a quarter million people, said.

"Some 600 people died in this area, but the toll could climb to 1,000."

In Concepcion, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Santiago, hungry, desperate residents roamed the streets looking for food and water.

Across many neighbourhoods, people were taking matters into their own hands, organizing self-defense groups, barricading streets and preventing strangers from entering.

Bachelet, outraged at the vandalism after stores were looted and torched, said it was not acceptable that "people have to organize mechanisms for their self-defense, just to hold onto the few possessions that they still have after the earthquake."

Hualpen mayor Rivera urged the government to send in a contingent of troops, and grimly warned: "If they have to kill, then let them kill."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Santiago Tuesday carrying communications equipment and said the United States stood ready to help.