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20,000
feared dead in China quake
WSN Network
BEIJING:
Over
8,000 people were feared killed — and the figure could rise to
20,000 according to some estimates — by a powerful earthquake which
rocked southwest China and left 900 teenagers buried in a collapsed
school. The toll is expected to rise as rescue teams make contact
with the worst-hit areas of
Sichuan
province, where roads and phone lines have been cut off since the
7.8 magnitude quake struck around 6.30am GMT.
At least 900
children are feared trapped under a collapsed school building in
Dujiangyan County, which is next to Wenchuan. Details of their fate
were still awaited. Dujiangyan,which has a population of 600,000,
is believed to be badly affected but there has been very little
information about the fate of its residents till evening.
Government
agencies involved in relief operations said it was difficult to rush
relief to the affected areas and helicopters have been pressed into
service. This indicated that road communications have been badly
affected. The 7.8 magnitude quake struck the
Sichuan
province at 2.28pm this afternoon and it was followed by several
aftershocks till 5pm. Tremors were also felt in the major cities of
Beijing and Shanghai resulting in thousands of people rushing out of
their houses and office buildings.
Deaths have also
been reported from the neighbouring provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu,
Chongqing, and Yunnan, where more than 100 people have died. Reports
suggested that the quake has spared the major city of Chengdu, which
is 146 kilometres away and caused no damage to the world’s biggest
dam, the Three Gorges Dam, which is several hundred kilometers away.
An executive engineer at the government agency managing the dam said
there has been no damage due to the earthquake.
Wenchuan, which
lies in the southeast part of the Tibetan- Qiang Autonomous
Prefecture of Aba, is home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, China’s
leading research and breeding base for endangered giant pandas.
Another tremor
measuring 3.9 jolted Tongzhou district in east Beijing minutes after
the quake in Sichuan. But there was no report of any serious
injuries due to this earthquake.
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14
May,
2008
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