At least 3,000 people are feared dead after a powerful earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter Scale rocked South West China's Sichuan province on Monday, the Chinese local government said.
Nearly 900 students in southwest China's Sichuan Province were feared buried when a high school building collapsed Dujiangyan, Sichuan in an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale on Monday afternoon, Xinhua reported.
At least four third-graders -- two boys and two girls -- were confirmed dead at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, about 100 kilometres from the epicenter in Wenchuan County, parents and witnesses said.
Xinhua reporters saw a three-story school building had partially collapsed. Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help.
Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting, the agency said.The tremors were felt in Beijing and Shanghai and other cities in the country, official Xinhua news agency said.
China rushed its troops to the earthquake-struck Wenchuan County of southwest Sichuan province for disaster relief work, with President Hu Jintao ordering all out effort efforts to help the affected people.
Chengdu Military Area Command has dispatched the troops who would assist the local government in Wenchuan county to guage the situation and help in relief work, Xinhua said.Premier Wen Jiabao was also on his way to direct the rescue work.
Premier Wen described the massive earthquake as "disaster" and called for calm.
Meanwhile, 10 more people were killed and 14 others injured in China's northwest Gansu province due to major earthquake in Sichuan province today, Xinhua reported.
The epicentre Wenchuan, about 146 km northwest of Chengdu, the provincial capital, has a population of about 111,800. Chengdu is a fast growing metropolis of over 10 million people.
Before the strong earthquake struck, the Sichuan provincial seismological bureau detected a moderate quake measuring 5.4 on the Richter Scale in Mianzhu city of Deyang, Xinhua said.
Today's quake was the strongest to hit Sichuan province in more than 30 years. Overall, 44 aftershocks had been reported, the strongest one measuring 5.6, it said.
The Chinese Air Force has sent helicopters to assist in relief work in the quake-stricken areas, while the State Seismological Bureau is also dispatching a team to gauge the situation.
The airport at Chendgu was closed to flights in the afternoon and all domestic flights headed there were diverted to Chongqing, the biggest industrial city in Western China, local aviation staff said.
Tremors were also reported in Ningxia, Qinghai, Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Yunnan, Hunan and Hubei provinces and the Tibet Autonomous Region, the State Seismological Bureau said.
In Zhengzhou, capital of central Henan province, people rushed out of homes and offices. Many said they felt dizzy and saw the ceiling light fixtures swinging back and forth.
The local government informed citizens through mobile phone messages about the earthquake and schools told students to go home or gather them in the playground.
Xinhua reporters in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, said they felt their office building rocking back and forth for about four minutes.
China said the Three Gorges Dam, largest hydro-electric project in the world, was not affected by the earthquake.
"There were no signs that the earthquake has affected the dam," Hu Xinge, an executive with the dam, was quoted as saying.
The National Stadium (Birds Nest) for the Olympics in Beijing was also not affected by the quake, Li Jiulin, an engineer in chief for the project said. The stadium, the main venue, was designed to endure an earthquake of 8 magnitude.
Major telecom firms said the quake had damaged power supplies to local telecommunication facilities, affecting cell phone services.
In Sichuan, about 2,300 local base stations stopped operating due to power shutdowns and transmission failures caused by the quake, Xinhua added.
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