BEIJING: More than 8,700 people confirmed dead in the powerful earthquake that struck southwestern China yesterday, according to state media reports.
The quake, with a magnitude of 7.8, struck close to densely populated areas in Sichuan province, including the capital Chengdu, shortly before 2:30pm (0630GMT).
It is the worst to strike China since the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which claimed 242,000 lives, Xinhua news agency said.
Xinhua said 8,533 people had died in Sichuan yesterday, citing the local government.
The national disaster relief headquarters reported 48 killed in northwestern Gansu province, 50 in the municipality of Chongqing, 61 in Shaanxi province and one in southwestern Yunnan, according to Xinhua.
All of those provinces and Chongqing, a special municipality of more than 30 million people, border Sichuan.
One other person was killed in central Henan province, the news agency said.
Tallied together, Xinhua has reported the deaths of more than 8,700 people.
At least 30 people were killed in Wenchuan, the epicentre of the earthquake, Xinhua said, but added the number of deaths there was likely to rise as the rescuers had been unable to reach the county.
Roads leading to Wenchuan had been destroyed and storms had prevented military rescue helicopters from getting there, Xinhua and other state-media reports said.
In Sichuan’s Beichuan county, which is close to Wenchuan, the number of deaths was estimated at 5,000, with 80 per cent of the buildings there destroyed and up to 10,000 people injured, according to Xinhua.
Xinhua reported earlier that 900 students were buried in the collapse of a high school building in Dujian-gyan city, also in Sichuan.
Fifty people have been confirmed dead at that school, the news agency said.
Xinhua reporters said teenagers partially buried were struggling to break free, while others were calling for help.
A tearful mother told the reporters her son was buried in the ruins.
Hundreds of people were also buried in two chemical plants in Shifang city, Sichuan, and more than 6,000 people nearby were evacuated, Xinhua said.
“Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help,” the agency said.
Hundreds of people were trapped under collapsed schools, factories and dormitories in Shifang in Sichuan, Xinhua said, including several hundred trapped under two collapsed chemical plants.
Some 80 tonnes of highly corrosive liquid ammonia had leaked in Shifang forcing the evacuation of 6,000 people, it said.
Hundreds of people were buried under rubble in a collapsed hospital in Dujiangyan.
Troops had begun pouring into the region with sniffer dogs, life detection equipment, and some firefighters carrying explosives to blow up rocks piled on the roads, state television said.
Landslides had cut off three major rail lines leading to Chengdu, stranding 31 passenger trains and 149 cargo trains, Xinhua said, but no casualties had been reported.
The National Tourism Administration had ordered travel agencies to halt tour groups to or through the quake area.
The earthquake’s force was enough to cause buildings to sway across China and as far away as the Thai capital Bangkok.
The Sichuan plain is one of China’s most fertile areas, but it relies heavily on an irrigation system linked to the 2,000-year-old Dujiangyan flood control works - which means the quake could exacerbate inflation, already running at the fastest pace in 12 years.
The quake is also the worst to hit China in 32 years since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died.
It has come at a bad time for China, which holds the Olympic Games in August, and has been struggling to keep a lid on unrest in ethnic Tibetan areas and the heavily Muslim northeastern Xinjiang region. — Reuters
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