Chilean Interior Minister Patricio Rosende said on Monday that the authorities have so far identified 497 fatal victims of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit the country's central-south regions on Feb. 27.

This represents a rise of 45 from the figure of 452 confirmed last Friday, Rosende said.

The largest number of deaths was recorded in the Maule region, some 400 km south of the Chilean capital Santiago, where 267 people lost their lives.

Meanwhile, the Legal Medical Service said that most of the victims were elders from Constitucion locality.

The director of the service, Patricio Bustos, said that there are another 10 bodies waiting to be identified in Chanco, Cauquenes and Constitucion.

"We are going to take their genetic samples ... and check with their possible relatives," Bustos said.

The Chilean government had originally estimated 802 deaths from the powerful earthquake, but later revised the number sharply down.

The earthquake also left hundreds of thousands of Chileans homeless, while the initial estimate of property damage stood at some 30 billion U.S. dollars.