More than 8,500 people died when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southwestern China on Monday, trapping adults and children under the rubble of collapsed schools and office buildings, and causing ammonia spills at a chemical plant, the state news agency said.
Xinhua, citing government officials, said 8,533 people died in the Sichuan province alone, while another 10,000 could be injured. In one county of Sichuan - Beichuan - an estimated 80 per cent of buildings were reduced to rubble.
The earthquake, felt as far away as Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam, struck about 100 kilometres northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its website. It hit at 2:28 p.m. local time, when schools were full and office buildings were packed.
People were also killed in the provinces of Gansu and Yunnan, and the municipality of Chongquing. No Canadian casualties or injuries have been reported, a Foreign Affairs spokesman said Monday, adding that the Canadian Embassy in Beijing is monitoring the situation and providing assistance to Canadians in the area.
Xinhua said about 900 students were trapped inside a high school in the Juyuan township, and students could be seen trying to climb out from under the rubble of the three-storey building, while others were heard calling for help.
At least four Grade 9 students were confirmed dead, while rescuers pulled 50 people from the debris. It was not immediately clear if they were alive or dead.
Several other schools reportedly collapsed as well, Xinhua said, including five in the Sichuan city of Deyang.
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At least one other person was killed when a water tower toppled near the epicentre of the earthquake, Xinhua said, while hundreds of people were buried by rubble when a chemical plant collapsed in the Shifang area of Sichuan. It's feared that 70 tonnes of liquid ammonia leaked at the scene.
A hospital, meanwhile, collapsed in Dujiangyan city, in Sichuan, Xinhua said.
Relief efforts may be hampered
Francis Markus, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Beijing, told CBC News that communications with the area have been disrupted.
"We have very little information and almost no communication with the areas around the epicentre, so just assessing the extent of damage and casualties is going to be a major operation," he said.
He said the Beijing-based Red Cross Society of China is gathering quilts, tents, food and other items to send to the affected areas, but it's "impossible to get transport to the areas. This is going to be a massive relief effort once it gets going."
Peter Ford, a writer at the Christian Science Monitor in Beijing, said relief efforts by the Chinese government are under way because it's now better organized. He said that the government has improved its disaster response system in the past year or so because the country is battered regularly by typhoons and other natural disasters.
Zaixin Ma, president of Dawa Business Group Inc. in Vancouver, told CBC News that his siblings and 90-year-old mother living in the Chengdu area were unhurt. But his brother and mother are staying overnight in a car instead of their house because of fears of another quake. Ma said several Chinese organizations in Vancouver have agreed to make a donation to the people affected by the quake this week.
In Beijing, more than 1,500 kilometres from the epicentre, thousands of people fled office towers, which swayed for more than two minutes after the quake struck. Among the buildings affected were those housing the media offices for the Beijing Olympics, which are three months away.
In Taipei, near the southeastern Chinese coast, buildings also shook violently, while in Shanghai, skyscrapers swayed as people rushed to the streets. People also raced out of buildings in Bangkok and Hanoi.
Quake could spark landslides
The Global Disaster Alert and Co-ordination System (GDAC) issued a statement saying the quake could have a "high humanitarian impact" and spark deadly landslides. GDAC, which is run by the United Nations and European Commission, said while the epicentre was in a sparsely populated area, the nearby city of Chengdu is home to about 10 million people.
Calls to emergency response numbers in Chengdu rang constantly busy on Monday, as telephone and power networks appeared to be down in much of the area, making it difficult to get information about the disaster.
"In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication converters have experienced jams and thousands of servers were out of service," said Sha Yuejia, deputy chief executive officer of China Mobile.
One Israeli student managed to text message the Associated Press from the city, saying there were widespread power outages and water outages.
"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," the student said.
Xinhua said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's southern railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare.
A magnitude-7.5 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing an estimated 240,000 people.
With files from the Associated Press