5,000 feared dead in China earthquake

(Source: www.ibnlive.com)

A powerful earthquake struck central China on Monday and state media reported that as many as 5,000 people were killed in a single county while nearly 900 students were trapped after their school collapsed.

The official Xinhua News Agency said 3,000 to 5,000 people had died in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the 7.8-magnitude quake. Another 10,000 people there were believed to be hurt.

The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.

Four of the dead were ninth-grade students killed when their high school collapsed, Xinhua said. Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school. Xinhua did not say how many of the students were feared dead.

It said its reporters in Juyuan township, about 96 km from the epicenter, 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.