China quake buries 900 students; Death Toll 10,000
'Pakistan Times' Monitoring Desk

BEIJING (China): Nearly 900 students in Dujiangyan in southwest China’s Sichuan Province were feared buried when a high school building collapsed in an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale on Monday afternoon.

At least four teenagers were confirmed dead at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, about 100 kilometers from the epicenter in Wenchuan County.

Yet another report says that a massive earthquake struck central China on Monday killing more than 7,600 people and trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school, state media reported.

The official Xinhua News Agency said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the 7.8-magnitude quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.

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.

Xinhua cited the Sichuan provincial government as saying 7,651 people died. The leadership said late Monday that "thousands" had died, and that the quake also had caused deaths in three other provinces.

The quake was one of the deadliest in three decades. It hit about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.

Xinhua said 50 bodies had been pulled from the debris of the school building in Juyuan town but did not say if the children were alive. Xinhua reported students also were buried under five other toppled schools in Deyang city.

Xinhua said its reporters saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building in Juyuan "while others were crying out for help."

Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."

Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school. Other photos posted on the Internet and found on the Chinese search engine Baidu showed arms and a torso sticking out of the rubble of the school as dozens of people worked to free them, using their hands to move concrete slabs.

Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system. The quake affected telephone and power networks.
"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.

"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.

The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer Olympics.

Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in August. None of the Olympic venues was damaged.

Skyscrapers in Shanghai swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets.

The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.

President Hu orders utmost Aid

President Hu Jintao on Monday ordered all-out efforts to help those affected by a major earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale that jolted Wenchuan County of southwest China’s Sichuan Province at 2:28 p.m. on Monday.

Premier Wen Jiabao was on his way to the area to supervise the rescue work.
The Chengdu Military Area Command has dispatched troops to help with disaster relief work in the earthquake-stricken area, military sources said.

Tian Yixiang, officer with the emergency office of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), said the troops will assist local government in Wenchuan county to gauge the current situation and to help with disaster relief work.

A major earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale jolted Wenchuan at 2:28 p.m. Monday, the State Seismological Bureau said. The epicenter of the quake was located 31.0 degrees north latitude and 103.4 degrees east longitude, the bureau said.●