Earthquake kills hundreds in southwest China

An intense rescue operation is under way in China after an earthquake killed at least 381 people and injured thousands more, leaving scenes of devastation across a mountainous area.

More than 12,000 houses collapsed and 30,000 were damaged in the quake zone in the southwestern province of Yunnan, China’s official news agency Xinhua said.

Soldiers on Monday stretchered the injured away from the scene in the immediate aftermath with residents fleeing as aftershocks hit.

A total of 7,000 emergency personnel, including 5,000 soldiers, police and firefighters had been mobilised, Xinhua said on Monday, and Premier Li Keqiang was heading to the scene.

Rescuers took victims to local hospitals and continued to pick through the rubble of destroyed homes in a desperate search for survivors, AFP news agency reported.

The official Xinhua news agency said the epicentre of Sunday’s quake was in Longtoushan town in Yunnan’s Ludian county.

Communications have been seriously affected and rescuers are still heading to the scene, the report said.

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Kunshan, China, said: “This quake has happened in a very very remote area of southwest China.

“The difficulty for rescuers is going to be the time it takes to reach this area.”

Pictures posted online by state media showed troops stretchering people away, and bricks which had fallen off buildings damaging cars, Reuters news agency reported. 

Many people rushed out of buildings onto the street after the quake hit, electricity supplies were cut and at least one school collapsed, Xinhua added.

“The problem is a lot of the structures in this area are simply not quake proof. This is a very impoverished region and very remote”, our correspondent reported.

The US Geological Survey said the quake registered at shallow depth of less than 1 mile (1.6 km). Chinese state media said the tremors were felt most strongly Yunnan, as well as in the neighbouring provinces of Guizhou and Sichuan.

The government is sending 2,000 tents, 3,000 folding beds, 3,000 quilts and 3,000 coats to the disaster zone, the report said.

Equipment brought to the area included life detection instruments and excavating tools.

Ludian is home to some 265,900 people, Xinhua added. China is frequently struck by quakes in this part of the country. A quake in Sichuan in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people. A quake in the same region in 2012 killed 80 people.

Earlier in the day a less severe quake struck Tibet, causing no casualties.

A Ludian resident described the scene as resembling a “battlefield after bombardment”, telling Xinhua: “I have never felt (such) strong tremors before. What I can see are all ruins.”