7,600 dead in China earthquake, toll may rise

Beijing: A massive earthquake struck central China on Monday, killing more than 7,600 people and trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school, state media reported.

The official Xinhua News Agency said 80 per cent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the 7.8-magnitude quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.

Xinhua cited the Sichuan provincial government as saying 7,651 people died, but the situation in at least two counties remains unclear.

It said its reporters in Juyuan township, about 96 km from the epicentre, saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building ''while others were crying out for help.''

Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had ''run faster than others.''

The earthquake comes less than three months before the start of the Beijing Summer Olympics, when China hopes to use to showcase its rise in the world.

The quake struck in the middle of the afternoon when classes and office towers were full, about about 96 km northwest of Chengdu. There were several smaller aftershocks, the US Geological Survey said on its website.

Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system. The quake affected telephone and power networks, and even state media appeared to have few details of the disaster.

''In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication convertors have experienced jams and thousands of servers were out of service,'' said Sha Yuejia, deputy chief executive officer of China Mobile.

Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were power and water outages there.

''Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting,'' he said.

Xinhua said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's southern railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare. Reporters saw buildings with cracks in their walls but no collapses, Xinhua said.

Reuters reports hundreds of people were buried in two collapsed chemical plants in Shifang in China's southwestern province of Sichuan. About 6,000 people were evacuated, Xinhua said, adding that more than 80 tonnes of liquid ammonia were leaked.

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The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 209 km to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer Olympics.

Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in August.

''I've lived in Taipei and California and I've been through quakes before. This is the most I've ever felt,'' said James McGregor, a business consultant who was inside the LG Towers in Beijing's business district. ''The floor was moving underneath me.''

In Fuyang, in the east, chandeliers in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel swayed. ''We've never felt anything like this our whole lives,'' said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.

Patients at the Fuyang People's No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.

Skyscrapers in Shanghai swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets.

The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.

The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.

China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people.