Boumerdes, Algeria ? Furious crowds hurled debris and insults at Algeria’s president Saturday when he visited a town devastated by an earthquake, blaming the government for a death toll that rose to more than 2,000 and shortages of food and water.

The anger came as Japanese rescue workers said they pulled a survivor — a 21-year-old waiter — from the rubble of a hotel on the Mediterranean coast at midnight Friday, more than two days after the quake hit.

The 6.8-magnitude earthquake flattened villages east of Algiers on Wednesday night. The Interior Ministry said least 2,047 people were killed and 8,626 injured in the quake, the official APS news agency reported early today.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika tried to tour the quake-ravaged town of Boumerdes on Saturday, but angry crowds harangued him with shouts of “pouvoir assassin!” — a common slogan roughly translated as “the authorities — killers.”

Bouteflika cut his visit short. Police fought to hold back the crowd as he drove away, with many people throwing chunks of rubble and other objects at his car and some kicking the cars in his motorcade.

The president faced similar anger later in the day in Lakhdaria, where one elderly protester loudly accused the government of misappropriating international aid meant for quake victims.

He later shrugged off the protests, calling them “testimony to the vitality of Algerian youth.”

The abuse directed at Bouteflika and other officials was a bold display of criticism against a military-backed government known to clamp down on dissent.

A resident looks at a victim in a gymnasium used as a morgue in Boumerdes, Algeria, about 30 kilometers east of Algiers. A strong earthquake hit the Algiers area Wednesday night, killing more than 1,800 people and injuring thousands.

Amid the strife and destruction, Japanese aid workers on Saturday said they had some good news. After 3 1/2 hours of digging through the wrecked Adim Beach Resort at Zemmouri, they rescued a man who somehow had escaped injury.

“It was almost a miracle. He was unscathed,” said Toshimitsu Ishigure, director of the Japanese Overseas Disaster Assistance. “He was able to breathe because he had a half-foot of space from a slab lying on top.”

Hopes of finding further survivors, however, was evaporating. Ishigure said rescues became far less likely more than 72 hours after a quake, and British officials said Saturday they soon would withdraw rescue workers and replace them with recovery experts.

The death toll was expected to rise as bodies are pulled from the rubble, and Hakim Mohand, of the Algerian civil protection unit, said it could reach 3,000.

The threat of disease was rising, they said, especially with temperatures rising to 104.

“Other risks such as infection must be tackled,” Willie McMartin of Britain’s International Rescue Corps told the Press Assn. news agency in Algeria. “There is an immediate need for disinfectant to be sprayed.”