Insurers’ losses from New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake in 80 years today may top the $6 billion of claims from a previous quake in the same place September, according to UK-based insurance analyst Peel Hunt.At least 65 people died in the 6.3 magnitude earthquake, which occurred at 12.51pm local time today. Buildings, roads and sidewalks in Christchurch were badly damaged or destroyed.“It seems likely that the market loss will be larger than the September quake,” Mark Williamson, a London-based analyst at Peel Hunt, wrote in a note to clients today. Overall losses from last year’s disaster are estimated at between $5.5 billion and $6 billion, he said.Catastrophe modellers Eqecat estimated that insured losses would probably exceed $1 billion, but added that the calculation was made more difficult by the fact that some buildings damaged in the first quake, or under repair, suffered further damage today.Bermuda reinsurers picked up a large portion of the bill for the previous earthquake, which was more powerful, at 7.0 magnitude, but which struck in the early hours of the morning and killed no-one.Most reinsurers were forced to revise up their initial estimates from the September earthquake as the government-backed Earthquake Commission, a disaster relief fund that buys reinsurance, raised its loss forecast.Most of the Island’s global reinsurers participate in the New Zealand earthquake reinsurance pool and most suffered losses in the tens of millions as a result.PartnerRe, which made one of the highest loss estimate of $140 million to $160 million for the September quake, was down almost four percent in mid-afternoon trading. XL Group was down more than four percent, while Catlin Group was down 3.8 percent.However, stocks generally were trading lower as oil prices soared in response to the uprising in Libya, with the S&P 500 down 1.9 percent at 2.40pm Bermuda time.Prime Minister John Key described the scene as “utter devastation” on Television New Zealand. It’s too early to put “hard and fast numbers” on losses for individual insurers, Peel Hunt’s Williamson said.“Although this earthquake is of a lesser magnitude than the event from September, this earthquake was very shallow and within city limits,” Eqecat said in today’s statement.“Ground motions within the city limits of Christchurch from this event could very likely exceed the motions from the last event. Initial reports indicate the collapse of buildings that did not collapse in September.”